Blake's 'Jerusalem' As Visionary Theatre: Entering the Divine Body (Oxford Theology and Religion Monographs) [Illustrated] 9780199603145, 0199603146

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Plates
Abbreviations
Introduction
About this Book
Some Important Terms
The Critical Background
The Texts
Part I: Perspectives, Characters, Settings
1. Visionary Theatre—Apocalyptic Images
Jerusalem and the Book of Revelation
Alchemical Visionary Theatre
Sublime Allegory—and Visionary Theatre
Entering Apocalyptic Images
2. Dramatis Personae
Angelmorphic Characters: The One and the Many
The Characters
3. Jerusalem: Her Character and Context
Like Christ
The Harlot, the Bride
The Woman Clothed with the Sun
Joanna Southcott, A Woman Clothed with the Sun
In Blake’s Poem
4. Jerusalem’s Jesus
Nature and Function
Jesus’s First Appearances
Visualizing Jesus: Young’s Night Thoughts
Coinherent Contraries
Beyond Law: Blake and St Paul
Erotic Spirituality
The Birth of Jesus
Healing Ministry: Raising Albion
Beyond the Trinity
Transfiguring Crucifixion
Creative Apocalypse
5. Shifting Settings—Building Projects
Shifting Settings
Building Projects
Druid Structures
Golgonooza
Jerusalem: The Transfiguring City
Part II: The Commentary
Reading the Poem
1. ‘To the Public’—Albion’s Fall
Overture: The Preface (1–4)
Opening Scene: Albion Rejects the Divine Song (4–5)
Scene Two: Los and the Spectre (6:1–11:7)
Scene Three: In the Spaces of Erin (11:8–14:34)
Scene Four: Sculpting World Views (15–17)
Scene Five: Hand and Hyle Intensify Fallenness (18–19)
Scene Six: Beulah and the Veil (19:40–25:17)
Interval (26)
Plate 26
2. ‘To the Jews’—Rescue Attempts
The Preface (27)
Scene One: Albion’s Fall: The Refugee Report (28–30)
Scene Two: The Triumph of Vala (31:2–34:35)
Scene Three: The Divisions of Reuben (34:36–36:42)
Scene Four: Los and the Eternals (36:43–41:31)
Scene Five: The Rescue Attempt (42–6)
Scene Six: Cycles of Violence (47:1–48:12)
Scene Seven: Redemptive Erin, A Terrible Separation (48:13–50:30)
Interval (51)
Plate 51
3. ‘To the Deists’—Calamities Amplify
The Preface (52)
Scene One: Intensified Fall, Los Infected! (53:1–58:20)
Scene Two: Urizen’s Temple (58:21–59:21)
Scene Three: In Cathedron’s Looms (59:22–62:42)
Scene Four: Hermaphrodite Spectre Rising (63:1–65:4)
Scene Five: Naked Daughters, War, Disease (65:5–69:5)
Scene Six: Beulah-Ulro/Heavenly Canaan (69:6–71:55)
Scene Seven: Fallibly Building (71:56–75:27)
Excursus
Interval (76)
Plate 76—Transfiguring Crucifixion
4. ‘To the Christians’—The Great Awakening
The Preface (77)
Scene One: Jerusalem Before the Furnaces (78:1–80:36)
Scene Two: Weaving False Bodies (80:37–82:79)
Scene Three: Los on his Watch (82:80–86:49)
Scene Four: Banal Bickering (86:50–88:54)
Scene Five: Apocalyptic Transformation (88:55–93:27)
Scene Six: Albion Awakens (94–9)
Eternal Interval (100)
Curtain Call (Plate 100)
Encore: Into Eternity
Various Eternities
Character Synchronisms
Synchronic Images
From Ulro to Eden
In Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
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B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
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M
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Citation preview

OX F O R D T H E O LO G I C A L M O N O G R A P H S

Editorial Committee J. BARTON N. J. BIGGAR M. J. EDWARDS P. S. FIDDES G. D. FLOOD D. N. J. MACCULLOCH C. C. ROWLAND

OXFORD THEOLOGICAL MONOGRAPHS THE SOTERIOLOGY OF LEO THE GREAT Bernard Green (2008) ANTI-ARMINIANS The Anglican Reformed Tradition from Charles II to George I Stephen Hampton (2008) THE THEOLOGICAL EPISTEMOLOGY OF AUGUSTINE’S DE TRINITATE Luigi Gioia (2008) THE SONG OF SONGS AND THE EROS OF GOD A Study in Biblical Intertextuality Edmée Kingsmill (2009) ROBERT SPAEMANN’s PHILOSOPHY OF THE HUMAN PERSON Nature, Freedom, and the Critique of Modernity Holger Zaborowski (2010) OUT-OF-BODY AND NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES Brain-State Phenomena or Glimpses of Immortality? Michael N. Marsh (2010) WHAT IS A LOLLARD? Dissent and Belief in Late Medieval England J. Patrick Hornbeck II (2010) EVANGELICAL FREE WILL Phillip Melanchthon’s Doctrinal Journey on the Origins of Free Will Gregory Graybill (2010) ISAIAH AFTER EXILE The Author of Third Isaiah as Reader and Redactor of the Book Jacob Stromberg (2010) CONTRASTING IMAGES OF THE BOOK OF REVELATION IN LATE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN ART A Case Study in Visual Exegesis Natasha F. H. O’Hear (2010) GENDER ISSUES IN ANCIENT AND REFORMATION TRANSLATIONS OF GENESIS 1-4 Helen Kraus (2011) KIERKEGAARD’s CRITIQUE OF CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM Stephen Backhouse (2011)

B L A K E ’ S J E RU S A L E M A S V I S I O NA RY TH E AT R E Entering the Divine Body

SUSANNE M. SKLAR

1

3

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York # Susanne M. Sklar 2011 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn ISBN 978–0–19–960314–5 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

For Lois, my mother And Boris, my father

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Preface Writing this book has been like discovering and uncovering a lost city. When I first looked at Jerusalem’s illuminated plates I could barely perceive that the city was there. But as with an exciting archaeological site, Blake’s Jerusalem is the sort of text whose meanings begin to unfold as we enter into the life of it. Blake wrote Jerusalem for no less a purpose than to transform individuals and societies, to create a world in which forgiveness can be a spiritual and social structuring principle. When I enter imaginatively into the world of the poem I (like one of its characters) become transformed. I can see how each character and creature is connected and responsive to all. Jerusalem’s designs, words, and characters create a world where transformation and forgiveness are not just possible; they are inevitable—and disconcerting. I had the great fortune to begin studying Blake (about thirty years ago) with Jean Hagstrum, a wise professor at Northwestern University. Professor Hagstrum, renowned for his work on the ‘Sister Arts’ of poetry and painting, was willing to let me explore Blake’s prophetic poetry from any artistic angle. I began focusing on Jerusalem, growing more confused with each passing day. Because of my theatrical training I knew that individual speeches in the poem would make magnificent audition pieces, but I had no sense of what the whole thing might be about. But the night before my penultimate meeting with Professor Hagstrum I had an extraordinary experience. The last great scene of Jerusalem, in which all living creatures enter the Divine Body, seemed to leap off its pages at me. I was inside the scene. I was reading as many children read; Blake’s characters (especially his Jesus) were more real to me than the furniture in my room. Something had happened to me on a fundamental level. Professor Hagstrum had never asked me a personal question but he did so the next morning. He took off his spectacles, polished them, and asked: ‘Susanne, what are your religious beliefs?’ Blake had brought me into the presence of God and I found myself confronting theological questions. I knew that to understand Jerusalem properly I needed to know more about the Bible, and particularly the Book of Revelation. But I did not have the opportunity to do so until 1999 when I met Christopher Rowland, Professor of biblical exegesis at Queen’s College, Oxford, who is also a passionate Blake scholar. (I had spent two busy decades working as an actress and director, a college teacher, a social worker, and a peace activist and researcher.)

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Speaking and corresponding with Professor Rowland about Blake and the Bible was like continuing my conversation with Professor Hagstrum. Shortly after September 11, 2001 I wrote about how the time had come for the wisdom in Blake’s Jerusalem to be let loose upon the world. I wrote of how the poem is an epic of peace, and without the forgiveness Blake’s heroine seeks to promulgate, humanity is surely doomed. I inflicted my exuberant diatribe upon Professor Rowland and he responded with a question: ‘Why don’t you come here and study with me?’ Thus began my journey into Jerusalem, filled with marvellous and difficult adventures. Blake once wrote ‘I live by Miracle’ and in the course of writing my thesis and this book I learned I must do likewise. Dozens of people and organizations made my work possible—and pleasurable. I could not have come to Oxford without the support of the Community of St. Mary in Mukwonogo, Wisconsin and the help of Jean Feraca, Luther the Jet (King of the Hobos), Cindy Infantino, John Gray, Julia Gray, Carol Sue Haney, Theresa Yuschok, Mrs Clarence Smithmeyer, the Polikoffs, and Michael Mattock. I also thank Barbara Newman, Becky Simon, Sasha Souvorkov, my brother Greg, my aunt Minodora, Rebecca Sundin, the Hubbells, the DeKoven Center, and Shimer College for helping me venture forth. I had no idea, however, how I would live for three years. Then after my first term, I received a scholarship through the Prophecy Project in the Theology faculty, funded by the Panacea Society in Bedford. I cannot adequately express my thanks to them. Not only did they support my research, they were extremely hospitable when I used their archives. I especially thank Mrs Ruth Klein. I must also give heartfelt thanks to Barbara Vellacott, who helped me engage with the poem on its own terms. Like me, she takes a creative approach to the interpretation of literature, bringing poetry to life in workshops and study days throughout Britain. Before coming to Oxford I had read the whole poem aloud with students from Shimer College (where I’d taught for six years). That reading gave me a sense of the poem’s story line. But when Barbara Vellacott helped me orchestrate a reading in a thirteenthcentury abbey near Oxford I began to perceive the quirks and motivations of each character. I began to see how they move, change, and interrelate. The poem’s strange words and imagery became for me like pieces of a delightful puzzle. Many discoveries would not have been possible without the help of kind librarians and scholars—especially Veronika Vernier at Queen’s College, Scott Krafft at Northwestern University, Martin Cherry at the Library of Freemasonry in London, Tim Heath at the Blake Society, David Rhoads at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, Jon Mee at University College, Oxford, and especially G.E. Bentley, who incisively and comprehensively commented on my entire manuscript. My greatest guide, of course, was Christopher Rowland. His

Preface

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integrity, insight, faith, and imagination illuminated my research and writing. All students should be blessed with such a supervisor; all writers should be blessed with such an editor. Without him my thesis would never have become a book. Working with him has been what Blake calls a wingéd joy. In Blake’s universe joy and woe are woven fine. When I was completing my thesis I became seriously ill. Yet that illness taught me that being part of a Divine Body is not metaphorical; it is ontological. Without the help of dozens of friends (and some strangers) I would never have been able to write my thesis, much less this book. Barbara Vellacott organized my health care and heroically helped me with proofreading. Without her kindness and the goodness of Jean Feraca, Dr Richard Proctor, Dr Tom Moran, Dr Sam Donta, and especially Dr Robert Ceisel I would not be writing these words. I have been helped immeasurably by Lauri Roberts, Lois my mother, Barbara Newman, Barbara Polikoff, Simon Dobnik, the Aldersons, the Stocklands, Pat Alexander, Frances Kennett, Elizabeth Harré, and many good people at the Iffley Village Church. Without them I would not have been able to work again. After receiving my doctorate I had the pleasure of teaching Jerusalem at Northwestern University and I owe a debt of gratitude to my students there, for they once again brought Jerusalem to life—making collages, performances, musical pieces, dances. They made visionary theatre pieces, one of them available online, a dance-opera that celebrates Jerusalem’s angelmorphic sensuality.1 It is my hope that this monograph will engender more creative interpretations of Blake’s great poem and perhaps even some spiritual and social transformation. With Blake’s Jerusalem I have been on a long journey of transformation. Finally, I must thank my beloved friend Michael Sommer (at the Cumnor Fellowship) who brought me from what Blake would call the ‘Sleep of Ulro’ to a place of divine vision again. Michael is this book’s literary editor; the clarity he demanded from me revivified my brain as well as my prose. To him, to Christopher Rowland, to G.E. Bentley, and to Jean Hagstrum I give a double portion of thanks and praise. Susanne Sklar Cumnor Fellowship, Oxford August 2010

1

Jerusalem’s Aria, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so2w4lhfR (09.06.10).

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Contents Plates Abbreviations

xv xvi

Introduction About this Book Some Important Terms The Critical Background The Texts

1 3 5 8 15

Part I: Perspectives, Characters, Settings

17

1. Visionary Theatre—Apocalyptic Images Jerusalem and the Book of Revelation The Book of Revelation and Visionary Theatre Visionary Musicals? Alchemical Visionary Theatre Jacob Boehme—Prophetic Progenitor Freemasonry and Jerusalem Sublime Allegory—and Visionary Theatre Entering Apocalyptic Images

19 20 20 23 25 28 35 40 42

2. Dramatis Personae Angelmorphic Characters: The One and the Many The Characters Sons and Daughters Zoas and Emanations Spectres, Shadows, and Vala Albion’s Antecedents Our Hero, Los—and the Narrator

44 45 49 50 54 56 61 63

3. Jerusalem: Her Character and Context Like Christ The Harlot, the Bride The Woman Clothed with the Sun Boehme’s Sophia, Blake’s Jerusalem Joanna Southcott, A Woman Clothed with the Sun Southcott, Sharp, and Pughe

67 67 68 71 72 75 76

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Contents Erotic Spirituality—Southcott and Blake Visionary Enactments In Blake’s Poem Her Character and Story Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four

78 81 83 84 85 88 90 91

4. Jerusalem’s Jesus Nature and Function Jesus’s First Appearances The Frontispiece (J1) The Preface (J3) Scene One (J4) Visualizing Jesus: Young’s Night Thoughts Coinherent Contraries Beyond Law: Blake and St Paul Erotic Spirituality In the Moravian Church Swedenborg Swedenborg’s Writings The Birth of Jesus Healing Ministry: Raising Albion Beyond the Trinity Transfiguring Crucifixion Creative Apocalypse

94 94 95 96 96 96 98 101 104 107 107 111 111 113 114 115 117 119

5. Shifting Settings—Building Projects Shifting Settings Building Projects Druid Structures Antiquarians, Druids, and Freemasons Urizen’s Temple Golgonooza Jerusalem: The Transfiguring City

122 122 124 125 126 133 134 138

Part II: The Commentary

143

Reading the Poem 1. ‘To the Public’—Albion’s Fall Overture: The Preface (1–4)

145 149 149

Contents Opening Scene: Albion Rejects the Divine Song (4–5) Scene Two: Los and the Spectre (6:1–11:7) Scene Three: In the Spaces of Erin (11:8–14:34) Scene Four: Sculpting World Views (15–17) Scene Five: Hand and Hyle Intensify Fallenness (18–19) Scene Six: Beulah and the Veil (19:40–25:17) Interval (26) Plate 26

xiii 151 154 158 161 164 165 169 170

2. ‘To the Jews’—Rescue Attempts The Preface (27) Scene One: Albion’s Fall: The Refugee Report (28–30) Scene Two: The Triumph of Vala (31:2–34:35) Scene Three: The Divisions of Reuben (34:36–36:42) Scene Four: Los and the Eternals (36:43–41:31) Scene Five: The Rescue Attempt (42–6) Scene Six: Cycles of Violence (47:1–48:12) Scene Seven: Redemptive Erin, A Terrible Separation (48:13–50:30) Interval (51) Plate 51

171 171 173 176 179 181 185 191 191 195 195

3. ‘To the Deists’—Calamities Amplify The Preface (52) Scene One: Intensified Fall, Los Infected! (53:1–58:20) Scene Two: Urizen’s Temple (58:21–59:21) Scene Three: In Cathedron’s Looms (59:22–62:42) Scene Four: Hermaphrodite Spectre Rising (63:1–65:4) Scene Five: Naked Daughters, War, Disease (65:5–69:5) Scene Six: Beulah-Ulro/Heavenly Canaan (69:6–71:55) Scene Seven: Fallibly Building (71:56–75:27) Excursus Interval (76) Plate 76—Transfiguring Crucifixion

197 197 199 204 205 209 210 213 216 217 221 222

4. ‘To the Christians’—The Great Awakening The Preface (77) Scene One: Jerusalem Before the Furnaces (78:1–80:36) Scene Two: Weaving False Bodies (80:37–82:79) Scene Three: Los on his Watch (82:80–86:49) Scene Four: Banal Bickering (86:50–88:54) Scene Five: Apocalyptic Transformation (88:55–93:27) Scene Six: Albion Awakens (94–9) Eternal Interval (100) Curtain Call (Plate 100)

223 223 225 226 229 233 234 240 248 248

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Encore: Into Eternity Various Eternities Character Synchronisms Synchronic Images From Ulro to Eden In Conclusion

251 251 253 255 257 258

Bibliography Index

261 291

Plates From Archaeologia II (1773)—Engravings by James Basire Figure 1. Plate IV Ancient Monuments in Penrith Churchyard (Basire) Figure 2. Plate VI Account of the Monument Commonly Ascribed to Catigern Basire) Figure 3. Plate VII Kit’s Cot-House (Basire) Figure 4. Plate VIII Stone Hatchets (Basire) Figure 5. Plate IX Font at Bridekirk (Basire) Figure 6. Plate XVII Tartarian Antiquities (Basire) Figure 7. Plate XVIII* Tartarian Idols (Basire) From Jacob Bryant’s New System: An Analysis of Ancient Mythology (1775) Figure 8. Volume II, Plate IV (Basire/Blake?)

Abbreviations BR c/pl. C D E ELG FZ i J K KR LB M MHH NT ODC P PL PN PR S VLJ

Blake Records (Bentley) Catalogue/Plate (Butlin’s two volumes) Commentary Upon the Divine Revelation (Pareus) Damon, Blake Dictionary Erdman, Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake Everlasting Gospel (Blake) Four Zoas (Blake) illumination Jerusalem (Blake) Keynes, Blake: Complete Writings Key to the Revelation (Mede) Little Book (Mede) Milton (Blake) Marriage of Heaven and Hell (Blake) Night Thoughts (Young) Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church Paley, William Blake: Jerusalem Paradise Lost (Milton) Panacea [Society] Notebook Paradise Regained (Milton) Stevenson, Blake: The Complete Poems Vision of the Last Judgment (Blake)

Jacob Boehme’s works are organized by chapter and verse, except for WC which is paginated. A C EG FC FQ MM

Aurora (1612) Clavis (1624) Election of Grace (1623) Treatise on the Four Complexions (1621) Forty Questions Concerning the Soul (1620) Mysterium Magnum (1622–1623)

Abbreviations SR TCT TI TL TP TT WC

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Signatura Rerum (1621–1622) Treatise of Christ’s Testaments (1624) Treatise on the Incarnation (1620–1621) Threefold Life of Man (1619–1620) Three Principles of Divine Essence (1618–1619) Two Treatises (1624) Way to Christ (1623–1624)

Swedenborg’s writings are numbered by aphorism (#). AR CL DLW DP HH JD TCR

The Apocalypse Revealed (1759) The Delights of Wisdom Concerning Conjugial Love (1768) The Wisdom of Angels Concerning Divine Love and Wisdom (1763) The Wisdom of Angels Concerning the Divine Providence (1764) A Treatise Concerning Heaven and Hell (1758) Journal of Dreams (c.1744) True Christian Religion (1771)

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Introduction ‘One truly knows only what one can create’ Giambattista Vico

William Blake created Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion between 1804 and 1820. Since its conception this epic poem, comprised of one hundred illuminated plates divided into four chapters, has baffled many good readers. In 1811 Robert Southey thought it was ‘perfectly mad’ (BR310);1 in 1978 W.J.T. Mitchell called it ‘some species of antiform’ whose ‘narrative goes nowhere’ (1978: 165, 170); Robert Essick more recently wondered (2003: 251) if ‘it is more than a curiosity shop with some treasures hidden amidst the clutter?’ Many reasonable readers think the poem makes no sense. The poem resists interpretation by rational means alone, and this is as it should be, for Jerusalem’s words and images seek to move us (with its characters) away from a purely rational way of seeing and living to one that is highly imaginative. Jerusalem is not a poem to which we assign ‘meaning’; it is meant to be experienced. It does not progress in a linear fashion: people and places morph into one another; the story unfolds kaleidoscopically, a changing montage of words and images. This changing montage is full of treasures when we engage with it imaginatively; it does not respond to a solely intellectual approach. Of course intellectual analysis cannot be discarded; but reading Jerusalem involves using reason in the service of imagination. Blake wants us to experience imaginatively how we and all things are interconnected, ‘divine members of a Divine Body’. We can move (with Blake’s characters) from a state of rationality and isolation (which he calls Ulro) to one of creative interconnectedness (called Eden/Eternity). In Eden/Eternity forgiveness is a spiritual and social structuring principle—which Blake advocates as the basis for all human and political relationships. Embarking on this Edenic journey may seem ‘perfectly mad’ until we enter the world of the poem on its own terms.2 We have to understand its fluid characters, shifting settings, and strange words and images. We have to attend 1 2

In Crabb Robinson’s diary, 24 July 1811. ‘The work of art teaches us how to understand it’ (Rosen 1998: 6).

2

Blake’s Jerusalem as Visionary Theatre

to what Blake calls the Minute Particulars (or the unique and specific details) of the poem. This requires analysis and critical thought; we need to know what, where, how, and why things are in order to experience how they interrelate. Entering imaginatively into Jerusalem involves close textual reading and analysis—and close reading and analysis depends upon imaginative engagement with the text. Jerusalem asks its readers to be both critical and creative. The concept of ‘visionary theatre’ lets us explore Blake’s masterpiece both critically and creatively. Jerusalem is a visionary text, replete with theatrical elements (e.g. song, dance, monologues, special effects). In the preface to Jerusalem’s opening scene Blake lets us know that the poem is a performance, for every word has been chosen ‘to suit the mouth of a true Orator’ (J3). The poem is meant to be heard—and its luminous images are meant to be seen. What we see and hear leads us into new imaginative worlds, changing our perception. This is what theatre does. ‘Theatre’ in Greek, means ‘seeing place’—and the kind of seeing that happens in this place is essentially imaginative.3 In the opening scene (J4) Blake makes it clear that Jerusalem arises from a visionary experience; it is dictated by ‘the Saviour’ who is singing and ‘spreading his beams of love’ (J4:4–5), connecting heaven and earth. Visionary art and literature often deal with the relationship between heaven and earth, between the human, angelic, and the divine. A visionary text, like a visionary experience, is unconfined by mundane space and time.4 Action can happen both in a psychological or spiritual realm (on a microcosmic stage) and in a sociopolitical or cosmological realm (on a macrocosmic stage). Characters can be in several places at once; a visionary narrator may present us with a ‘god’s eye’ view of the action, asking us to see several scenes or vignettes simultaneously. This can be confusing. It is especially confusing when a reader tries to assign a fixed meaning to Blake’s fluid creatures, places, and imagery. So it is helpful to think, not merely like an objective critic, but like an actor or director, responding to those visionary creatures by asking, not ‘what do they mean?’ but rather: ‘How do they look? What do they want? How do they sound? Where are they?’ Attending to their movements, motivations, and actions reveals, not the abstract meaning of Jerusalem, but an experience of the poem—as we experience a play by attending to what is happening onstage. Of course Blake’s Jerusalem cannot be confined to a mundane three-dimensional stage; it requires what I call visionary theatre. ‘Visionary theatre’ is a fluid term. It can refer, not only to the locus of the action, but also to a way of reading, to the nature of a text, to elements within The noun ‘theatre’ derives from the Greek verb, theaomai, which means not just to look at something, but to make the effort to discover it (as in consulting an oracle). 4 For more about the nature of ‘the visionary mode’ in biblical literature, see Lieb (1991), especially pp. 5–9. 3

Introduction

3

the text, and to creative productions (or interpretations) of the text.5 In visionary theatre the text and the reader are not confined by mundane space and time; action can take place both within the microcosm (‘little world’) of an individual mind or soul and the macrocosm (‘great world’) of politics, ecology, and the body of God. The ‘stage’ is within, around, and before us—and on that micro- and macrocosmic stage, the human, the angelic, and the divine interrelate. Imaginatively, we can think of ourselves as being as fluid as Blake’s peculiar characters. We can ‘enter into’ them imaginatively, as an actor would do—and we can be transformed by them. This is in keeping with the purpose of the poem; Blake wants to open our eyes ‘into Eternity . . . in the Bosom of God, the Human Imagination’ (J4:18–20); he wants us to dwell with and in his characters, with one another—and with God. Visionary theatre allows us to engage with Blake’s composite art both sequentially and synchronically, and to perceive how micro- and macrocosmic dramas interrelate, transforming characters and their audiences. Such an approach is helpful when engaging with any poetry (and particularly with epic poetry). However, visionary theatre is particularly helpful when reading Jerusalem because of the extreme fluidity of time, place, perception, and character in the poem.

ABOUT THIS BOOK Unlike other interpretations of Jerusalem, mine is based on the experience of both analysing and playing imaginatively with Blake’s characters and imagery. Many theatre directors have a book in which they consider a play’s historical context, its imagery, and previous interpretations before mounting their own productions;6 this monograph is like a director’s book. It is necessary to analyse a production’s component parts (imagery, settings, and characters) before regarding it as a whole (as a doctor needs to learn about anatomy and physiology before making diagnoses). In Jerusalem we must understand the poem’s Minute Particulars (its language, its visual imagery, its historical and theological contexts) in order to see how its characters interact dramatically. I am not arguing that Jerusalem is visionary theatre or trying to demonstrate a literary theory about it; I am using this interpretative tool to elucidate the text,7

5 For an example see the dance opera created by my Northwestern University students, Jerusalem’s Aria: www.youtube.com/watch?v=so2w4lhfR_Y%20accessed%2008/08/2009. 6 For an example, see Teller’s online ‘book’ for his 2008 production of Macbeth in Washington, DC at: www.pennandteller.com/03/coolstuff/tellersmacbethindex.html., accessed 09/08/ 2009. 7 Recalling Wittgenstein’s idea that the meaning of a word is its use.

4

Blake’s Jerusalem as Visionary Theatre

to guide readers through the journey from empirical Ulro to imaginative Eden/Eternity—where all things interrelate in the Divine Body. This monograph is in two parts. I begin by separating and dissecting Jerusalem’s components; then I discuss how they interrelate, both sequentially and holistically. The second part ends with an encore (an afterword) in Eternity. Part One outlines the Minute Particulars of the poem. Because I approach Jerusalem as ‘visionary theatre’ I begin by discussing the history of that idea and how it can help us to understand some of the poem’s weird imagery as well as its imaginative and theological context. I then describe each of the poem’s uncannily fluid characters, dedicating separate chapters to the theological ramifications of Blake’s depictions of Jerusalem, his heroine, and Jesus, the Divine Body. The poem’s settings are as fluid as its characters and we will see how they interrelate before we move through the story of the poem in Part Two. It is necessary to be comfortable with Jerusalem’s imagery, characters, and settings before exploring the text sequentially. The material in Part One prepares the ground for my scene-by-scene commentary in Part Two. Jerusalem tells the story of the fall of Albion (in its Chapter One), rescue attempts (Chapter Two), escalating violence and oppression (Chapter Three), and a great awakening (Chapter Four). The story is not straightforward, however. People and places dwell within one another (and all dwell within Jesus, the Divine Body) in a very fluid world: biblical places and characters can appear within ancient British ones who can, in turn, coinhere with those in Blake’s own life.8 It is sometimes hard to tell who is speaking—until you imagine how you would portray Jerusalem’s characters in your own ‘visionary theatre’. Then you can see what they want, how they change, how they speak, where they are, and how they interrelate. Entering into Blake’s characters means being like one of his Eternals, angelic beings who can both focus rationally (what Blake calls ‘contraction’) and expand imaginatively, seeing and being in the whole Divine Body—which (microcosmically) dwells within each living thing and (macrocosmically) contains the universe. It is extremely important to understand what Blake means by expansion and contraction, because it is central to understanding the whole poem. When the Eternals contract their senses they are separate. As separate beings, when they see the Divine Body they see its many parts (its ‘multitudes’), not the whole. On the other hand, when they expand their senses they are connected to one another. They remain differentiated, but they are unified. (I shall use the phrase ‘differentiated unity’ throughout this book.) In the state called Eden/

8 Coinherence has to do with how each thing dwells within every other—as the Father is in Jesus and Jesus is in the Father in John 14.11.

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Eternity there is not a dichotomy between individual and corporate existence: they coinhere. The expanded Eternals behold the Divine Body as a whole, but that wholeness is animated by many parts. The uniqueness of Blake consists in understanding that the one and the many are in a dynamic relationship. The ideal quality of relationship between the many is a unified field of love. This quality of love engenders what Blake calls ‘continual forgiveness’. It informs the whole of Blake’s vision: emotionally, aesthetically, theologically, intellectually. Expansion is essentially imaginative; contraction is essentially rational: imagination and analysis, like faith and reason, can complement one another. These themes recur throughout this monograph.

SOME IMPORTAN T TERMS I shall be referring to many themes and terms. I have mentioned the journey from the state of rational Ulro to imaginative Eden where we can enter the Divine Body. Let us look at what these and other key Blakean terms signify. The Divine Body is a place; it also has human form, and is a highly imaginative way of being. Every living thing is a Divine Member of the Divine Body (J91:30–32, J98) as all are members of Christ’s body in 1 Corinthians 12 and are structured by Christ in Ephesians 4.16.9 At the beginning of the text (J3) Blake exhorts readers to be ‘wholly One in Jesus our Lord’ in a spirit of ‘continual forgiveness’ and calls us to enter ‘the Saviour’s Kingdom, the Divine Body’. The Divine Body which is the Saviour’s Kingdom is also called ‘the Human Imagination’ (J5:58–59, 24:2, 60:57) or ‘the Divine Vision’ (J29:1, 36:56, 42:7, 54:32, 60:5, 71:59). This is not just a spiritual concept; it has substance, having a ‘Divine Voice’ (J29:5, 35:3, 60:65), ‘Divine Hand’ (J30:12, 31:31), divine lineaments (J60:51), fingers (J12:10–33), breath (J90:2–5), a bosom (J4:15, 99:4), and feet (J52:14). This infinite body exists within you, and you, with every created thing, also dwell within it. As we shall see, when you enter the Divine Body you are not confined by space and time. Space and time are ingredients with which you, like God, can sculpt the quality of relationships, interconnecting with all things in what Blake calls ‘fibres of love’ (J4:8). This interconnection often equates with ‘Emanation’ in Blake. Emanation can refer to giving forth the ‘fibres of love’ that connect humans to one another, to all things in nature, and to God. It more often refers to the quasi-angelic characters who create such interconnections. The Emanations, who are almost always feminine, facilitate connections with their masculine counterparts and between the elements in the world of the poem (including

9

Blake expands upon and challenges some Pauline ideas, as we shall see in Chapter 4.

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Blake’s Jerusalem as Visionary Theatre

the readers). Their masculine counterparts are called Zoas, who apart from their quasi-angelic qualities, also embody life principles like reason (Urizen), emotion (Luvah), primal drives (Tharmas), and prophetic imagination (Los). Ideally, Zoas and Emanations interconnect, but through most of the poem many of them are in conflict. What Blake calls ‘Selfhood’ creates this conflict. Selfhood impedes forgiveness and interconnection; entering the Divine Body involves annihilating Selfhood. ‘Self ’ is not a good thing in Jerusalem. Here we do not aspire to attain the ‘true Self ’ as in the psychology of Carl Jung and his followers. Blake uses the term ‘Selfhood’ as it is found in the writings of Jacob Boehme, a German visionary whose works will be discussed throughout this book. Selfhood refers to that which dehumanises others, craving power and control. In Jerusalem Selfhood is a disease (J45.10–15), equated with Satan (J27) and a creature called the Spectre (J33.17–18, 58.48), ‘the abstract objecting power that negatives every thing’ (J10.14).10 Selfhood does not love; it consumes. Selfhood does not ‘emanate’, or give forth the ‘fibres of love’ that connect all things to each other. Selfhood traps us in a state of being called Ulro; it prevents us from moving to Eden/Eternity, the state in which we enter the Divine Body. There are four states of being in Jerusalem: Ulro, Generation, Beulah, and Eden/Eternity. Ulro (also called Satan) is a world of ‘single vision’, or empirical abstraction. In Ulro/Satan, that which cannot be quantitatively expressed does not exist. The state of Generation is more organic and is often equated with vegetation (in all its senses). It is a cyclical state of being, a productive world filled with cycles of birth and copulation and death. Manufacturing, breeding, and creative mutations all happen in Generation,11 but Generation can also be mindless and mechanistic. It is not an emotional state like Beulah (the land called ‘married’ in Isaiah 62.4). Blake’s Beulah is a resting place, a place where erotic bliss can flourish. If the bliss of Beulah is blighted by Selfhood it can fall into Generation and Ulro—reducing the beloved to an object, a thing to be controlled. If, however, Selfhood is annihilated, then Beulah can open into Eden/Eternity. The bliss of Beulah is a launching pad that can lead to life in the Divine Body where all living things interconnect. Blake also calls Eden/Eternity (the fourth state of being), a place of Fourfold Vision.12 Let me illustrate these four states of being in terms of a tree. Think of a pine tree: that tree can be, and be seen, in Ulro, Generation, Beulah, and Eden/ Eternity. In the State of Ulro the tree is not even an individual tree. It is an This negativity is reminiscent of Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust who says of himself: ‘Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint’ (Part I.1338). 11 Gigante (2009) discusses creative mutations (especially in Jerusalem’s visual designs) when examining the poem in light of eighteenth-century biological theories of epigenesis. 12 In a letter to Thomas Butts (22 November 1802) Blake writes a poem about his own experience of fourfold vision, going beyond threefold Beulah, and the ‘Single vision’ of ‘Newton’s sleep’ (K818). 10

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abstraction. A paper company can put our tree in Ulro; the company sees it as a statistic, a tiny factor in a commercial analysis (as a single mother supporting three children becomes a statistic in a bankruptcy filing, and a little girl, dead, becomes ‘collateral damage’ in a Pentagon report). Ulro makes it possible for us to dehumanise people and nature. Blake rejects this way of thinking and urges us towards an empathic connection with every living thing. We may not be empathic in the state called Generation either, but Generation does take into account cycles of growth, life, and change. When our tree is ‘harvested’ by the paper company another one is planted; this is good business. The beauty of our tree is not important; it is alive, but only in what Blake would call a ‘vegetative’ or material way. We need not have an emotional response to it in Generation; however, we do in Beulah. Beulah is a romantic ‘moony’ state of being (J19:36–47). Here we may rest beneath the tree, enjoy its beauty, write a poem about it. We might hug the tree or embrace our beloved beneath it. But if we are blighted by Selfhood we will treat the beloved (and the tree) as an object and fall into emotional and spiritual Ulro. If, however, we are free from Selfhood, then we and the tree and our beloved all participate in the Divine Body, the Saviour’s Kingdom. You and I and the tree together can be in what Martin Buber calls an ‘I–Thou’ relationship;13 we are each divine members of the Divine Body. Like you, the tree has presence; like you, it is a subject worthy of attention and respect. In Eden/Eternity we can be in an I–Thou relationship with all that lives. Crucially, we can retain the differentiations of Ulro, the productivity of Generation, and the bliss of Beulah in Eden/Eternity. In Eden (the place of Fourfold Vision), our tree is part of the Body of Christ; it is a tree of life—and so am I and so are you. Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion is like our tree. It is not merely an object to be analyzed (as in Ulro). To enter more deeply into the poem we also need to be productive (as in Generation), emotionally responsive (as in Beulah), and highly imaginative (as in Eden/Eternity). Then we can enter into an I–Thou relationship with it, or as Blake puts it, ‘make a friend and companion’ of his images (K611). As Boehme (one of Blake’s prophetic progenitors) urges, we should cast off our robes and gowns and play in the garden of roses (TL11.112). It has been observed that Jerusalem is indeed more like a game to be played than an object to be dissected (Youngquist 1993: 617), and that readers of Blake should be ‘creative explorers in their studies’ (Van Kleeck 2008: 73). Creative explorers, like actors, need to know about the textual territory into which they are travelling. The following exploration stands on the shoulders of generations of scholars, many of whom were and are baffled by Jerusalem.

13

See his Ich und Du (1923).

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Blake’s Jerusalem as Visionary Theatre

What follows is a brief overview of these critical responses and the ideas that have shaped my interpretation.

THE CRITICAL BACKGROUND My insights are built upon nearly two centuries of commentary about Blake’s great poem. I have learned a great deal from those who have grappled with Jerusalem’s complexities. Even those who are baffled (or misguided) can help us in our exploration. In 1811 Robert Southey told Crabb Robinson that Blake had shown him ‘a perfectly mad poem called Jerusalem—Oxford Street is in Jerusalem!’ (BR310).14 Conflating Britain and Israel made no sense to him, but such synchrolocality is integral to how the poem works. Three years after Blake’s death Allan Cunningham also found Jerusalem unintelligible,15 praising Blake’s designs, but disparaging the ‘exclusively wild’ text, for it ‘wanders from hell to heaven and from heaven to earth . . . The crowning defect’, he declares, ‘is obscurity’ (BR641–42). In that same year, however, the anonymous writer of an article in the London University Magazine (which both Keynes and Paley think was written by Blake’s Swedenborgian friend, Charles Augustus Tulk16) found ‘fresh delight’ and ‘great genius’ in Jerusalem. This writer understands Albion’s macrocosmic identity as ‘the present state of England . . . the province of one grand man, in which diseases . . . are continually engendered’ (BR513–14). Someone like Tulk might have been comfortable with non-linear apocalypses; wandering from hell to heaven would have been at the heart of a Swedenborgian’s devotional reading. Yet Blake’s disciple Frederick Tatham (who gave Blake’s widow, Catherine, a home and support) was as confused as Southey and Cunningham. In a sympathetic biography in 1832 Tatham praised Blake’s designs but found his prophetic writing ‘mostly unintelligible’ (BR686). Throughout the nineteenth century Blake was best known as a painter and engraver, though Alexander Gilchrist’s Life of William Blake (1863) honors Blake’s poetry as well. Gilchrist tries to decode Jerusalem allegorically, comparing it to and treating it like Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1863: 205–12). But decoding Jerusalem is only partially illuminating. Its ‘Code’ is not a thing to be cracked, containing a secret message. It is more like a door code, opening the reader into an imaginative reality where everything is a part of everything

14 15 16

Citing Crabb Robinson’s Diary, 24 July 1811. In his Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters (1830). Paley (1983:13); Keynes (1949: 84).

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else—in differentiated unity.17 Of course readers must understand Blake’s allusions (and many of them are biblical) to enter into that reality. Algernon Charles Swinburne places the poem in a biblical tradition and stresses the importance of forgiveness within it; he warns that unwary readers ‘have stumbled over it and broken their wits’ and that reading such a baffling poem requires great patience (1868: 276). Edwin Ellis and W.B. Yeats (1893) patiently expand upon Gilchrist’s impulse to decode and allegorize. They rightly observe that Jerusalem is like a scrapbook, but a scrapbook with structure. In an effort to impose this structure they read the poem’s four chapters thematically, in terms of Creation, Redemption, Judgment, and Regeneration; whereas I think that Jerusalem tells a story: Albion’s fall (Chapter One), many rescue attempts (Chapter Two), the spread of violence (Chapter Three), and a great awakening (Chapter Four). S. Foster Damon also seeks to decode the poem in William Blake: His Philosophy and Symbols (1924). Damon considers Jerusalem Blake’s masterpiece; he investigates the significance of what I call Blake’s ‘choruses’ (the Sons of Albion, the Daughters of Beulah, Israel’s tribes, etc.) and tries to describe Jerusalem’s four states of being (rational Ulro, cyclical Generation, romantic Beulah, and visionary Eden). Damon spent forty years attempting to define the Minute Particulars of every Blake character, setting, and historical reference, publishing his helpful Blake Dictionary in 1965. During the same period, Northrop Frye produced his immensely influential work, Fearful Symmetry (1947). Frye reads Jerusalem in terms of a cycle of energy and resurrection—but his ambitious reading is problematic because it focuses upon characters who play minor roles in the poem.18 He does, however, place Blake firmly within a biblical tradition. ‘In reading Jerusalem’, Frye writes, ‘there are only two questions to consider: how Blake interpreted the Bible and how he placed that interpretation in an English context’ (1947: 356–57). Frye sees Blake’s Jesus as ‘the pure community of the divine man’, standing just outside the Bible. ‘To reach him’, Frye drolly notes, ‘we must crawl through the narrow gap between the end of Revelation and the beginning of Genesis’ (1947: 389). As we shall see in our sequential reading of Jerusalem, it is indeed through apocalypse that humanity enters into the divine, engendering eternal creation (J98). J.G. Davies was the first theologian to write at length about William Blake.19 His Theology of William Blake (1948) contrasts Blake’s imaginative theology

I have explained this concept in ‘About This Book’ above. He reads the poem in terms of Luvah (who has no lines) and Orc, who appears only once and is dormant (J14:3). 19 Subsequent theologians include: Baker (1957), Altizer (1967), Phipps (1971), Lewis (1986), John (1986), Grab (1996), Jackson (1997), Fiddes (1991, 2000), Burdon (1997), and Rowland (1999, 1999a, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2005a, 2007). Those considering Jerusalem will be cited again. 17 18

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Blake’s Jerusalem as Visionary Theatre

with that of the desiccated eighteenth-century Anglican Church. He praises Blake’s ‘pacifism and commitment to forgiveness’ as well as his ‘sound Pauline theology’; however, he does not consider how Blake challenges Paul (on issues such as body and spirit, sexuality, inclusive theology), as we shall see in my chapter about Jerusalem’s Jesus. Because Davies thinks Blake’s characters are mental diagrams he cannot appreciate their Minute Particularity or understand how they participate in the Divine Body; and he does not attempt to interpret Jerusalem. Charles Williams was producing an interpretation (albeit a brief one) while Davies was writing.20 He understands that Jerusalem is about forgiveness and reconciliation. Unfortunately (like Davies) he flattens Blake’s excellent characters, calling them not ‘individuals’ but ‘states’ melding into a community which he calls a ‘Republic’ of love and grace (1984: 93–5). It is strange that Williams, who is known for his doctrine of coinherence,21 could not see (as an Eternal can) that in Blake the community and the individual coinhere. Forgiveness honors difference and unity, the one and the many. Williams also seems to think Blake was uninterested in justice, for he ignores Blake’s political and social concerns. David Erdman, in Blake: Prophet Against Empire (1954), is primarily concerned with the poem’s political and social dimensions. He too honors Blake’s prophetic pacifism, and like Williams he sees that ‘the motif of Jerusalem is peace without vengeance’.22 Like Mark Schorer before him (1946), Erdman reads in terms of Blake’s contemporary political context. He sees Jerusalem as Blake’s response to the Napoleonic wars, identifying Albion with Britain’s war policy, Druid slaughters with Waterloo, and bloodshed ‘from Albion to Great Tartary’ with ‘the extension of the war in 1812 to Russia’ (1954: 460–80). Though he briefly touches upon millennial thinking and Blake’s apocalyptic metaphors, the poem’s characters and their stories are eclipsed by his reading of Jerusalem as historical allegory. In Blake’s Apocalypse (1963) Harold Bloom builds upon Frye’s excellent observations and explores Blake’s prophetic imagery, linking him with Hebrew prophets. In a later essay (1971) Bloom relates Jerusalem to Ezekiel’s Merkabah (divine chariot) vision, just briefly mentioning the Book of Revelation. Finding Blake’s designs distracting, Bloom only discusses aspects of the verbal text; he does not grapple with the whole illuminated poem. Jean Hagstrum was the first scholar to read Blake’s illuminated books as ‘composite art’ in his groundbreaking work, William Blake: Poet and Painter (1964). He also understood that Blake’s work is both prophetic and theatrical: in ‘The Wrath of the Lamb’ (1965), Hagstrum explores Blake in relation to

20 21 22

His treatise, The Forgiveness of Sins, was written in 1942 but not published until 1950. For more about Williams and coinherence, see Barbara Newman’s excellent article (2009). Italics are original.

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John on Patmos; in ‘Blake and the Sister Arts Tradition’ (1970) he considers how Blake’s ‘visionary forms dramatic’ move ‘from tableau to tableau’ accompanied by music. Hagstrum’s comparison of Blake’s Jerusalem, ‘a woman with only a hint of a city’, with St John’s ‘city with only a hint of a woman’ (1970: 89) inspired my first questions concerning Jerusalem as a character and the poem’s prophetic ‘descent’ from John’s Revelation. Thomas Altizer (1967, 2009) makes interesting correlations between Blake and Nietzsche, and intriguing observations about apophatic theology—but he mistakenly celebrates Blake as a ‘Christian atheist’. This is because he does not understand the difference between characters and states of being—not an easy concept to grasp. Altizer thinks that since Luvah (the Zoa embodying romantic and revolutionary energy) is called Satan when he enters a fallen state (J49:68) and is identified with Jesus (a character) when he suffers (J65–66), therefore Jesus and Satan are identical. He does not notice that in Jerusalem Satan is an abstraction; he is not a character. Satan (or Selfhood) is the Ulro state into which anyone can fall (J27:76) and from which all can be delivered. Blake’s Jesus is a character, both human and divine. Blake’s sense of human divinity is informed by his reading of Jacob Boehme. Desiree Hirst (1964) and Kathleen Raine (1968) place the poet in an esoteric context, linking some of Jerusalem’s imagery with Boehme’s. Raine wants Blake to be an esoteric Platonist, erroneously discounting his Christianity. She expands upon Frye’s philosophical and alchemical insights, an expansion made more illuminating in Morton Paley’s better balanced Energy and the Imagination (1970). Paley more carefully delineates how alchemical, neoPlatonic, ancient British, and millennial traditions influence Blake’s prophetic writing, but he does not interpret Jerusalem in this book. Joseph Wittreich was the first to suggest that Jerusalem could be read as visionary theatre (1973); he used the apocalyptic Commentary of David Pareus (a seventeenth-century theologian) to map out Jerusalem’s four chapters. But he did not consider the hermeneutic weaknesses in Pareus’ analysis (as I shall do in the following chapter) or see that Jerusalem has a large cast of characters. Wittreich tries to read Jerusalem as a remake of Revelation’s drama and Milton’s Paradise Regained, asserting that both feature only two principal characters: ‘John, or Blake, who are actors throughout; and, Jesus, who in both cases is the author of the Revelation, the true maker of the poem’ (1973: 38). However, Jerusalem features six principal characters (Los, Albion, Jerusalem, Vala, the Spectre, and Jesus), many supporting characters (Enitharmon, Luvah, Hand and Hyle, Cambel and Gwendolen, Erin, Reuben, London), important cameo roles (Dinah, Oxford, Bath, Mary and Joseph), significant silent appearances (Urizen, Ahania, Enion, Tharmas, Moral Virtue)—as well as at least three choruses (the Sons of Albion, the Daughters of Beulah, the Eternals/Cathedral Cities) and a ‘back-up band’ (the Sons of Los). Jesus and

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the first-person prophet are characters along with the others—and in fact have fewer lines than Los, Albion, the Spectre, Jerusalem, or Vala. Roger Easson (1973) thinks the poem is essentially dramatic but he does not understand that its narrative voice is essential to the drama. He likens the narrative to Vala and her veil, which must be removed so that Jerusalem, the drama of the poem, may be revealed. He creates a reductive theatrical condensation, removing the narrator—which is like removing the chorus in a Greek tragedy. Yet because of his dramatic approach, Easson does understand that Jerusalem has a story, whereas those who are more rigorously analytical remain baffled by it. W.J.T. Mitchell (1978:165–70) and Paul Youngquist (1993) think the poem is plotless. Vincent DeLuca calls Blake’s work a ‘wall of words’ (1986, 1991), an idea informing Angela Esterhammer’s more recent observation that Blake ‘tends to create an impenetrable language that baffles and estranges his readers’ (2006: 75). I think Blake creates language and designs that are fascinating and difficult in order to engage both the intellect and the imagination of his readers. In a letter (1799) to Dr Trusler, an irascible patron who seems to have found Blake’s work ‘obscure’, Blake declares that ‘what is not too Explicit’ is ‘the fittest for Instruction because it rouzes the Faculties to act’ (K793). Each plate of Jerusalem is like a puzzle in pictures and words that can lead readers into the world of Blake’s poem. An essay could be written about each illuminated plate. Of the book-length studies that have been written about Jerusalem23 I have found Morton Paley’s Continuing City (1983) the most helpful. Paley considers Jerusalem from many perspectives, illuminating important aspects of the poem. Yet, though he asserts that Jerusalem has a story (within a montage of imagery and massed voices) Paley does not use his excellent thematic insights to guide readers through the poem. Like Hagstrum, Paley places Blake in a millennial context and suggests that the ideas of Joseph Mede (another seventeenthcentury interpreter of Revelation) can help us understand Jerusalem’s labyrinthine plot. Mede regarded the Book of Revelation holistically (as if he were looking at a painting), and he used the word ‘synchronism’ to describe the simultaneity of its dramatic action. Paley briefly uses Mede’s Key of the Revelation and Handel’s Messiah to illuminate Jerusalem’s form, and I shall expand upon his ideas in the next chapter. I have found his notion that the poem is ‘a song for many voices’ (1983: 293) to be particularly intriguing. Paley’s fine insights have helped me perceive that by attending to the massed voices, the dramatic vignettes, the Minute Particularity of who is speaking and where, a story emerges. The poem is both sequential and synchronic, verbal and visual.24 23 Six have been written: Wicksteed (1954), Doskow (1982), Paley (1983), Witke (1986), Dortort (1998), and Whitmarsh-Knight (2007). Wicksteed and Whitmarsh-Knight present nonacademic linear explications of the poem. 24 Jennifer Davis Michael compares it to a cacophonous city we can perceive holistically and explore temporally—through streets (poetic lines), shores and walls (borders or designs), and districts (chapters) (2006: 163–69).

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The diachronic readings of Jerusalem unfortunately minimize its dramatic richness and theological concerns. Minna Doskow (1982) tries to read every plate in terms of Blake’s notions of political, moral, and imaginative ‘Error’ until Albion’s awakening eradicates them all. Though she assumes action can happen both sequentially and synchronically, Doskow does not understand that characters can be simultaneously both human and divine. Joanne Witke’s linear reading (1986) reduces Jerusalem to a confusing philosophical and aesthetic allegory in which Blake extends Bishop Berkeley’s polemic against Locke to a critique of Sir Joshua Reynolds. She writes from an exclusively theoretical perspective and does not consider how characters are shaped, move, or change. Many critics discuss aspects of the characters of Los (the poem’s tenacious hero) and Albion (universal humanity, a man, and a land), and I have learned much from their varying insights. For example, Edward Rose (1973, 1985) shows that Los, a prophet with a great task, creates a redemptive apocalypse. He likens Los’s work to ‘the gospel of forgiveness’, and Albion’s awakening to the apocalyptic trumpet which shall change us all ‘in the twinkling of an eye’ (1 Cor.15.52). Thomas Frosch, in The Awakening of Albion (1974), compares Jerusalem’s non-linear structure to cinematic montage and stresses the centrality of Los. Unfortunately, he ignores Blake’s Christology and sees Albion’s awakening as a secular aesthetic apocalypse, celebrating human creativity and erotic bliss. This is certainly important, but it is just one element in this multifaceted work. David Fuller, in Blake’s Heroic Argument (1988: 171–224), also focuses upon the Los–Albion relationship; he considers friendship ‘a central aspect of the poem’. Additionally, his interpretation touches on Jerusalem’s performative aspects, occasionally using Shakespeare as a heuristic device, as I do in this book. Fuller has helped me see that the poem’s narrative is shaped by dynamic monologues, dialogues, and choruses. Jerusalem, our heroine, has some of the best speeches in Blake’s illuminated epic, and it is strange that her importance is widely underestimated. Some feminist critics, like Marc Kaplan (1996/97) and Mary Kelly Persyn (1999), cast Jerusalem as a powerless victim, following Anne Mellor’s erroneous assertion that Blake’s women are either ‘passively dependent . . . or aggressive and evil’ (1982/83: 148).25 Tristanne Connolly declares that ‘Freud and Blake both consider women “little capable” of civilization’s difficult tasks’ (2002: 218). Behmenist readings26 like those of Raine (1968), Brian Aubrey (1986), and Kevin Fischer (2004) identify Blake’s heroine with Boehme’s passive Mirror of Divine Wisdom. These critical errors must be challenged; Jerusalem is neither passive nor dependent! Jerusalem (who is also called Liberty) can travel from the Thames to Spain and China to Poland and America, spreading fair trade and beauty throughout the earth (J24, 79). She can stretch to the 25 26

See also Fox 1977; Ostriker 1982/83. i.e. readings based on the writings of Jacob Boehme.

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Blake’s Jerusalem as Visionary Theatre

moon or repose in Beulah, and, like a social activist, she works in Satanic mills (J60–62). What we call ‘civilization’ emanates from her. Of course not every reader marginalizes Jerusalem: Hagstrum calls Blake’s heroine ‘woman in her highest state’ (1985: 138), and Magnus Ankarsjö suggests that Jerusalem may be ‘Blake’s most successful female character’ (2004: 173).27 Hagstrum is particularly aware that Jerusalem freely embraces Jesus in ‘the time of love’ (J20.37–41).28 Moreover, she protests eloquently against oppression in one of the poem’s most magnificent monologues (J78–80). She is a complex character. In Blake’s designs she is both vulnerable and strong (J26, 92), human and winged like an angel (J2, 14, 32, 47, 96). Joseph Viscomi focuses upon Blake’s visual work in his excellent study, Blake and the Idea of the Book (1993), and discusses the moveable plate numberings of Jerusalem’s second chapter. Blake made only five 100 plate copies of Jerusalem. Chapter Two in copies A, C, and F follows an ordering used in Erdman’s and W.H. Stevenson’s editions of Blake’s writings. Geoffrey Keynes uses the D and E ordering: copy E is the only complete colored copy. Viscomi observes that the mysterious F copy is not numbered in Blake’s handwriting. John Linnell acquired it within a week of Blake’s death and most probably numbered it himself. Linnell owned copy C and would reasonably have followed the plate order he knew (1993: 355–59). However, Viscomi does not note that the D/E plate ordering also makes more dramatic sense.29 The more recent book-length studies, Fred Dortort’s The Dialectic of Vision (1998) and David Whitmarsh-Knight’s William Blake’s Jerusalem Explained (2007), do not expand upon Paley’s fine work and neither considers how visual and verbal imagery interrelate throughout the poem.30 Dortort’s ignorance of many scholarly sources causes him to concoct a skewed and confusing Luvah–Christ ‘perspective frame’ through which he misreads the poem in terms of sexual triangles, casting Jerusalem as a passive victim. He does not attend to what motivates Blake’s characters or how they act. He finds Edenic (fourfold) vision particularly bewildering (1998: 371–72), and ignores Blake’s theology entirely. On the other hand, Whitmarsh-Knight often mentions Blake’s ‘Anglo-Celtic Christianity’ in his detailed plate-by-plate analysis, and I wish he would expand upon what he means by this. However, his interesting book is not academic or essentially theological; it is primarily concerned with 27 Because his interesting work focuses upon Blake’s Four Zoas he does not discuss Jerusalem’s story or her theological ramifications. In a later book Ankarsjö suggests that ‘in the long run ALL Blake’s women characters . . . must be read positively’ (2009: 93). 28 Conversation at the 1995 Ilan-Lael Conference on Beauty (Julian, CA). 29 D/E’s ordering launches Los’s rescue attempts with a messenger speech; he empowers the flaccid Eternals to help and they almost rescue Albion. Hope rises and fades. Copy A/C/F presents a repetitive downward spiral, a series of failures with the ‘messenger speech’ as a coda. 30 Though Whitmarsh-Knight discusses the crucifixion in Plate 76, he does not consider how text and image interrelate in other plates.

Introduction

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what might be called Blake’s visionary geometry. He focuses on Albion and describes his predicament spatially—as a series of collapses from the circumference to the centre, a vortical movement finally reversed by God. There are many ways of interpreting Jerusalem, just as there are many ways of staging King Lear. Good interpretations must take into account how the poem’s characters, settings, imagery, and action interrelate. The scholars and critics I have discussed have helped me understand important aspects of those interrelations. Throughout this book I (like one of the daughters of Albion) shall be weaving the strands of these and other ideas together to form my own interpretation of Blake’s masterpiece. By paying attention to the Minute Particulars of Jerusalem I, like Blake, hope to help readers perceive and experience an apocalyptic vision of universal salvation, also called apocatastasis. In apocatastasis forgiveness can transform even demons and lost souls. No one is damned. Origen first proclaimed this doctrine in the third century; Gregory of Nyssa modified it in the fourth.31 It resurfaced among Jane Lead’s Behmenist followers32 and, somewhat later, among Moravians, a sect to which Blake’s mother belonged (Davies and Schuchard 2004: 36–42). Blake is not quite as radical as Origen, who was anathematized for suggesting that God’s inexorable forgiveness might eventually transform even Satan. In Jerusalem Satan (also called Selfhood) is an abstract negative power. That negativity is shattered by Los’s hammer, which is ‘eternal forgiveness’ (J88:50). Building with eternal forgiveness means transmogrifying rage, facing a seven-headed harlot dragon, and enduring storms, diseases, and wars until all creatures can move beyond Ulro (a purely rational state) into Eden, entering the Divine Body. As I discuss Jerusalem’s visionary theatre I shall consider how forgiveness and human divinity are made manifest in various characters and throughout each chapter of Blake’s great poem.

TH E TEXTS This book is based upon copy E of Jerusalem, which I had the good fortune to work with at the Yale Center for British Art. ‘There is no limit of translucence’ (J42:35) in many of the delicately painted plates. Blake infuses some of Jerusalem’s images with a rose-gold wash that eludes satisfactory reproduction. Some images seem lit from within. ‘It’s like looking at stained glass!’ exclaimed a reader working at an adjoining table. 31

For an excellent discussion of early Christian apocatastasis, see Ludlow (2000: 1–115), especially 78–92. Like Blake, Gregory thought that hell fires purify. 32 See Lead’s (1697) Revelation. Versluis (1999: 55–77) discusses Lead’s Behmenist fellowship, and Ferber discusses universal salvation among radical millenarians (1985: 189–91).

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I more regularly use the 1991 facsimile issued by the William Blake Trust, with good notes by Paley. Because Keynes uses E’s plate ordering I also use his text, Blake: Complete Writings (1974).33 I have found the notes in Stevenson’s edition (2007) as helpful as Paley’s and am guided by both in the second half of this book. I also refer frequently to Martin Butlin’s fine catalogue, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake (1982), and G.E. Bentley’s immaculately researched Blake Records (2004). All biblical quotations are taken from the Authorized Version.

33

Erdman’s Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake (2009) is considered the Authorized Version but I prefer Keynes, who inserts quotation marks whenever a character speaks. This helps readers see the relation between dramatic action and narrative. His chronological arrangement places Jerusalem in proximity to ‘A Vision of the Last Judgment’ and ‘The Everlasting Gospel’, situating it theologically. The Santa Cruz Blake Study Group (including Nelson Hilton, Paul Mann, and Thomas Vogler) is uncomfortable with some of Erdman’s alterations (Glausser 1998: 146). I am particularly concerned about preserving the gaps in the text. Blake obliterated key words, especially in the first plate of text; Erdman painstakingly reconstructed them from barely perceptible traces of letters. As I shall discuss, I think the gaps are deliberate; they let the reader know immediately that Jerusalem is an interactive text, a delightful puzzle.

Part I Perspectives, Characters, Settings

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1 Visionary Theatre—Apocalyptic Images Blake’s visionary theatre is filled with weird imagery, peculiar characters, and shifting settings. This chapter begins with an exploration of the idea of ‘visionary theatre’—which arises from approaches to the Book of Revelation (by David Pareus and Joseph Mede) that have been applied to Jerusalem (by Joseph Wittreich and Morton Paley). Their interpretations make me see that Revelation and Jerusalem have musical as well as theatrical aspects. Secondly, I consider Jerusalem in the context of esoteric texts with visionary and theatrical elements1 paying particular attention to the works of Jacob Boehme, whom Blake acknowledges as a prophetic progenitor. Though Boehme is only occasionally overtly theatrical, his way of seeing the cosmos, the human soul, and scripture helps illuminate Jerusalem’s micro- and macrocosmic imagery. Thirdly, I consider how Blake’s imagery may be influenced by the visionary theatre of the Freemasons, whose pageantry colored popular culture in eighteenth-century London.2 I conclude with a discussion of how Blake’s visionary theatre, ‘a Sublime Allegory’, can engender spiritual and social transformation. To transform (and be transformed) we must, like actors, ‘enter into’ Blake’s apocalyptic images. (‘Apocalypse’ means ‘unveiling’ or ‘uncovering’; revelation can change perception, assumptions, and social structures.) As has been mentioned, visionary theatre is a multifaceted concept that invites us to approach Jerusalem imaginatively and analytically, as well as sequentially and synchronically—and to perceive how micro- and macrocosmic dramas interrelate, transforming characters and their audiences. Visionary theatre allows us to be like one of Blake’s Eternals, who both rationally contract and imaginatively expand their ‘infinite senses’: they perceive both differentiated details and unity. Like a lens through which a text can be seen, 1

I will not compare Jerusalem to masques (like Milton’s Comus), though masques are akin to visionary theatre (featuring mythic characters, transformations, strange plots and imagery, and the inclusion of the audience in its action) because mechanical spectacle is of paramount importance in a masque, and masques were created, not to transform perception, but to honor and uphold those in power (see Beer 2008: 64–75). 2 The Freemason’s Tavern and Hall were built directly opposite James Basire’s home and studio where Blake served his apprenticeship from 1772 to 1779.

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visionary theatre helps us perceive a text both from within (as an actor would do) and also from without (as a director or spectator). We can imagine inhabiting two reference frames, seeing the work from behind the eyes of particular characters, while also seeing how characters, settings, action, and imagery interrelate. Using visionary theatre as an interpretative tool helps us understand how Jerusalem is structured, the nature of its imagery, and how it is akin to or influenced by other forms of what could be called visionary theatre.

JERUSALEM AND THE BOOK OF REVELATION Jerusalem is not written in the form of a play but it is theatrical, a visionary production widely regarded as an apocalyptic text.3 Blake’s first commentator, Benjamin Heath Malkin (1806), noted: ‘The book of Revelation, which may well be supposed to engross much of Mr. Blake’s study, seems to have directed him . . . ’ (BR567).4 Like the Book of Revelation, Jerusalem deals with the totality of redemption, both cosmic and individual, in a mythopoetic montage—filled with music, strange beasts, catastrophes, angelic characters—unconfined by mundane space and time. Reading Jerusalem as John’s Apocalypse has been read can illuminate aspects of its structure, imagery, and theatricality.

The Book of Revelation and Visionary Theatre The idea of visionary theatre is first detectable in seventeenth-century apocalyptic commentaries. David Pareus, a professor at Heidelberg, approached John’s text as a musical tragedy, ‘a dramaticall prophesie’ (C24), in his 1618 Commentary Upon the Divine Revelation (translated 1644). According to Pareus, John’s characters act in a montage of performances in concert with visionary figures (‘one while of 24 Elders and Beasts, another while of Angels’). These visionary performances seek to ‘infuse holy meditations into the mindes of the Readers and to lift them up to Heavenly matters’ (intro.20). Pareus wants to demonstrate that Revelation’s ‘diverse shews’ reveal the triumph of the true Calvinist Church.5 Pareus tries to separate Revelation into a theatrical series of ‘Seven Visions’, each divided into four parallel acts. In each vision Pareus wants the first act to 3

See Frye, Bloom, Hagstrum, Paley, Youngquist, Burdon, Goldsmith, Rix, and Rowland (among others). 4 And in 1818 Coleridge wrote to a friend: ‘ . . . verily I am in the very mire of common-place common-sense compared with Mr. Blake, apo- or rather ana-calyptic Poet and Painter!’ (BR336, citing Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. E.I. Griggs. Oxford: 1959, IV, 833–4). 5 Pareus can misread the theatrical sources he cites. For instance, he invokes Creon’s wrongheaded insult to Tiresias from Sophocles’ Antigone (‘The whole priestly generation is

Visionary Theatre—Apocalyptic Images

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depict calamities; the second should prefigure ‘comforts opposite to the calamities’; the third must amplify calamities; and the fourth must show ‘the declining of Anti-Christ’s Kingdom’ (intro.27). Pareus uses this structure to create arguments concerning Protestant Manifest Destiny but John’s text does not fit his format. So Pareus rearranges Revelation, cutting and pasting pieces of chapters 6 and 7 so that comforts can contrast with calamities. Revelation’s hallelujah chorus (19.4–6) interrupts what should be a calamity in his scheme. Pareus thinks his seven visions create an allegorical map of history, revealing the imminent downfall of the papal whore of Babylon. Joseph Wittreich (1973) was the first to use Pareus’ ideas as a way of reading Jerusalem. Wittreich suggests that Blake’s illuminated poem may be read in terms of the anti-papal polemic, likening the shadowy Spectre in Blake to Pareus’ depiction of ecclesiastical tyranny, and the restoration of Blake’s heroine (Jerusalem) to the Church being freed from papal oppression (1973: 44). Unfortunately, such allegorical observations do not regard Jerusalem’s characters as characters or guide readers through the poem. I think it is not Pareus’ polemic, but his ‘vision-divisions’ (calamities, comforts, amplified calamities, victory) that can help illuminate Jerusalem’s structure. (Ironically, Blake’s work subverts the sense of chosenness that Pareus celebrates.) When I apply these ‘vision-divisions’ to Jerusalem I see the structure of its story: Chapter One depicts the calamity of Albion rejecting the Saviour’s song and Jerusalem’s love; in Chapter Two, Albion’s cities, friends, and immortals offer comforts; in Chapter Three, calamities amplify as Jerusalem and Los both fall into error (‘Religion Hid in War, a Dragon Red and hidden Harlot’ triumphs (J75:20)); and in Chapter Four, the Spectrous Selfhood, or ‘Antichrist accursed’ (J89:10) is overcome. Whether Blake had access to Pareus’ Commentary I cannot tell. It is not very ‘Blakean’. Blake claims divine inspiration, whereas Pareus condemns such visionaries. He proclaims: ‘Those who boast of visions as if they were inspired . . . are deceivers’, for the time of prophecy ‘ceased with the gift of miracles, after the Gospel was sufficiently propagated’ (C20). Pareus despises religious art, declaring that Revelation’s two-horned beast fills the blasphemous church with damnable images (C311). Blake by contrast thinks sculpture and painting are integral to the building of Jerusalem: ‘Praise is the Practise of Art . . . Christianity is Art’, he proclaims (K776–7). Blake would have encountered Pareus’ notion of visionary theatre in the preface to Samson Agonistes where Milton cites Pareus to legitimate his own poetic drama (1775: 58). In Reason of Church Government Milton praises

given to covetousnesse!’) to show that Ephesian faltering (Rev.2) relates to ‘simony, pride, and luxury which reign in the Romish Church’ (C33). Yet Pareus has not noticed that Creon’s house would not be destroyed if he heeded the wisdom of Tiresias, the priest he insults. The priest has integrity.

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divine visionary theatre, citing ‘the grave authority of Pareus’ to support the reading of Revelation as choral tragedy (1753: 29). Milton probably learned about Pareus from Joseph Mede, one of his Cambridge tutors.6 Mede published his Clavis Apocalyptica (Key to the Revelation) during Milton’s second year at Christ’s College. According to the historian Katharine Firth, this seminal book transformed Mede from ‘scholar to prophet’ (1979: 214–28).7 Mede’s Key was an authoritative apocalyptic commentary for over two centuries. It presents two ways of reading Revelation. In the first section of his Key, Joseph Mede regards Revelation holistically, as if it were a dramatic collage. He uses the term ‘synchronism’ to express a concept he may have gleaned from Pareus—who conflates the Woman Clothed with the Sun (Rev.12), the rule of the seven-headed beast (Rev.13.5), the trodden Temple court (Rev.11.1), and the prophecy of the Two Witnesses (Rev.11.3) (C282–3). Mede complicates this simultaneity, creating a series of seven synchronisms, which appeared to him in something like a vision. He acknowledges this insight as a gift ‘which the good and bountiful God hath vouchsafed me’ (KR28). He feels blessed with prophetic insight. Mede is visualising Revelation as he describes its synchronisms. (Jerusalem’s visionary narrator also sees synchronically, crying: ‘I see the past, present, and future happening all at once!’ (J15:8).) Picturing what he reads, Mede criticizes how artists depict the Great Dragon: ‘Away with you painters’, he writes, ‘which here at your pleasure distribute the ten horns into seven heads . . . ’ (LB15), for the dragon Mede holds all ten horns on one of its heads. Mede may have known paintings like the fifteenth-century Flemish Apocalypse by Hans Memling. In it the Woman Clothed with the Sun hovers in heaven while the angel stands on sea and land with the little book as horsemen ride and war rages in a corner of heaven. The star with the key falls into the bottomless pit; elders play and sing and the Lamb opens the book. People hide in caves, ships wreck, and Christ reigns in glory (Van Der Meer 1978: 259–71). Mede’s complex synchronisms, describing this sort of simultaneity,8 are cited by Paley when commenting upon ‘the representation of events in a non-chronological form’ in Jerusalem (1983: 286–7). In the second section of his Key, Joseph Mede uses dramatic metaphors to read Revelation as an allegorical map of history. He begins with the assertion that John’s ‘Apocalyptick Theatre . . . that Emperial Session of God’ is staged ‘according to the form of that ancient encamping of God with Israel in the wilderness’ in Numbers (1.52ff.), a setting to which Blake refers when envisioning the drama of Jesus rending the Infernal Veil of Law in Jerusalem’s third chapter (J69:38–42). In the process of reading John’s divine drama diachronically, Mede superimposes Mede may be the model for ‘Old Dameatas’ in Lycidas, Milton’s elegy for a college friend (Wittreich 1979: 37). 7 Also discussed by Burdon (1997: 34–5). 8 A visual diagram is inserted into the 1650 edition of his Clavis (26–7). 6

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certain symbols in Revelation on subsequent events in Christian history. In Mede’s prophetic interpretation, the opening of the seals paralleled the early Christian persecutions and the crumbling of the Western Roman Empire. The angelic trumpets blew as Huns and Herulians destroyed Rome, and Turkish infidels swarmed from the Euphrates, destroying Constantinople. The vials disgorge destruction as true Christians resist corrupted papacy—from the Waldensians and Hussites to Mede’s contemporaries. When the fifth vial spills, then Rome will fall, followed by the Ottomans in the sixth outpouring. Christ and his spouse are coming soon. Mede’s works were widely read, in England and also in America. His correspondence with Dr William Twisse, who spent time in the ‘English plantations in the New World’ (1678: 798–9), sparked a debate that still resonates among American Fundamentalists. Twisse thought Puritan America might be the New Jerusalem. Mede, an Anglican and a royalist, considered America not Jerusalem, but the seat of Gog and Magog. Influential American Puritans reacted against this. In 1703 Cotton Mather refuted Mede in his Problema Theologicum; Jonathan Edwards preached and wrote against Mede’s notions, as did Thomas Bray, a New England divine explicating the Apocalypse in 1780 (Smolinski 1990: 369–72). I shall touch upon how Blake’s heroine, Jerusalem, challenges this theology of chosenness when considering her lament (J78–80) in my chapter about her. Blake could have encountered Mede’s ideas in the library of his patron, William Hayley. Hayley owned Newton’s Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of John (1783) as well as the Theological Works of the Cambridge Platonist, Henry More (Munby 1971: #1668, 139; #2186, 156). Newton and More both follow Mede’s lead in exegesis; Henry More was one of Mede’s devoted students (Burdon 1997: 147), and he cites his teacher in his Works. Mede’s approach to John’s Apocalypse can be helpful when considering Jerusalem because he reads both sequentially (as we must read words) and synchronically (as we regard a painting), acknowledging the text’s visual, dramatic, and musical aspects. Unlike Pareus, he honors contemporary divine inspiration, for his insights repose ‘in the Oracles of the Holy Spirit’ (KR28). He interacts imaginatively with John’s text, envisioning the dragon and straining to hear the music of ‘the New Song’ (Rev.5.9–12, 19.1–7), which he believes contains ‘the whole mysterie of Evangellical worship’ (LB82).

Visionary Musicals? Like John’s Apocalypse,9 Jerusalem can be seen as a script for a visionary musical. Blake’s Jerusalem opens with music, with the Saviour ‘spreading his 9

For some musical numbers see Rev.5.8–13, 7.11–13, 15.3, 19.1–16.

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beams of love and dictating the words of this mild song’ (J4:5). Blake was known to sing his poetry; he calls himself ‘Poet, Painter, & Musician as the Inspiration Comes’ (BR95).10 As Paley observes (1983: 293–4), each chapter of Jerusalem includes different kinds of music and song as well as visual design. After the Saviour’s musical opening (J4), Los (a prophetic blacksmith) sings as he labors (J6:11ff.). In Chapter Two the Sons of Eden praise Los in songs (J30) and the deadly music of Vala’s shuttles sings in the skies throughout the action of at least ten plates (J31:48–41:7). In the third chapter, Albion’s fallen daughters ‘entune’ their ‘hymning chorus’, antiphonally chanting with fallible Los (J56). Gwendolen, ‘naked and drunk with blood’, leads a Bacchic dance, striking her ‘timbrel of War’ (J58:1–3) as slaves in the mills sing the ‘Song of the Lamb’. This prefaces an aria of joy sung by Mary the mother of Jesus (J60–1), followed by the grim victory songs of Albion’s fallen sons (J68:10–70). In the poem’s last chapter Albion’s fallen daughters, like Sirens, woo Los ‘all the night in Songs’ (J84:25, 88:23–4), nearly intoxicating him—but Los retains divine vision, singing Jerusalem into being (J86:1–33). Los chants in ‘Thunderous Words’ and those musical words move the Giants of Albion (J90–1), leading to the great apocatastasis in which every living thing takes part in the polyphonic Song of Jerusalem (J99). Like the Book of Revelation (1.3), Blake’s Jerusalem is written to be heard. The ‘true Orator’ for whom Blake has chosen every word (J3) is like the ancient Bard who sings Blake’s Songs of Experience—and like the rhapsodes who roamed the ancient pagan and early Christian worlds.11 The biblical singer and British bard may be melding in Handel’s oratorios, which were initially called ‘sacred drama’ and were performed repeatedly throughout Blake’s lifetime (Smith 1991: 136). In Handel, Israel can be conflated with Britain—as ‘Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anointed Solomon King’ during George II’s coronation (Colley 1992: 30–1). In his Messiah (which grew increasingly popular throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) Handel lets us hear the music of the apocalyptic ‘New Song’; his ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ is a synchronic pastiche from Revelation 19.6, 12.15, 17.14, and 19.16, and the production concludes with the words thundering around God’s throne in Revelation 5.12–13. Paley delightfully compares Jerusalem to this non-linear oratorio, and the poem’s shifting perspectives are certainly less daunting when envisioned as ‘a song for many voices’ (1983: 293). I would add that the dynamic of Albion’s awakening resembles the Messiah’s apocalyptic centrepiece. Being broken in pieces like a potter’s vessel immediately precedes Messiah’s exultant ‘Hallelujah’ much as 10

Letter to Cumberland, 1 September 1800. See Bacon (1979: 4–5); Von Balthasar (1994: I.100). Rhoads (2006) discusses the nature of early Christian performances; he has also given performances of the Book of Revelation at conferences, colleges, and churches. Jon Mee observes that Los (Blake’s tenacious hero) works through ‘Christian and Ossianic paradigms’ (1992: 84). 11

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Los’s smiting of his spectre on the anvil ‘in unpitying ruin’ (J91:44) precedes Albion’s abrupt awakening and the great song of Jerusalem. As in Messiah, Jerusalem’s characters change ‘in the twinkling of an eye’, exchanging ‘excrementitious’ corruptible bodies for sensually expanding incorruptible ones (J98). Jerusalem cannot understand why nations so furiously rage together when forgiveness could weave the social fabric ‘with wings of cherubim’ (J22:34–5). As in Messiah, so in Blake’s apocalypse: the fallen are transformed—not eternally condemned. Blake’s apocalypse reconfigures, and even subverts, key imagery in Revelation. As we shall see, Blake’s Jerusalem, the Bride of the Lamb, is called the harlot; his Babylon (Vala) is a chaste virgin. In Blake (unlike Revelation) those who wage war in the name of God serve the Great Dragon; Blake’s lake of fire is actually the water of life; judgment is forgiveness. Blake’s apocalypse reveals apocatastasis, the universal salvation from which no one is excluded.12 Even the most destructive characters can be alchemically changed (J91:32–52) in Blake’s visionary theatre. Visionary theatre is transformational; it changes the way we see. It can refer to a way of seeing a work like Revelation or Jerusalem and it can also refer to the form or nature of that work. It can help us to engage imaginatively with the text and to identify elements within it. Blake’s text is not only like the Book of Revelation, it has something in common with alchemical texts that have visionary and theatrical elements. Reading Jerusalem in the company of some alchemical texts helps make its structure and imagery more accessible.

ALCHEMICAL VISIONARY THEATRE Much of Blake’s imagery and some of his ideas come, not only from the Bible, but also from a pastiche of other sources, such as Shakespeare’s plays, his own sedition trial, and esoteric writings and engravings. William Blake was probably exposed to esoteric writings and images as an apprentice (aged 14 to 21), for his master James Basire was the engraver to the Society of Antiquaries, and many Antiquaries were interested in esoterica. Though we do not know how many esoteric writings and engravings Blake may have perused, a variety of alchemical texts have helped me understand aspects of the nature and structure of Jerusalem, its theatricality, and some of its puzzling imagery. Though Blake may not have drawn directly upon them, aspects of these works are analogous to aspects of Jerusalem’s visionary theatre.

12 Michael Ferber calls Jerusalem ‘a dramatization of linguistic apocatastasis . . . a conversion of Satanic words’ (1985: 209)—but he does not discuss the poem’s story.

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As Frances Yates notes, alchemical writers often use theatrical metaphors in works that seek to transform human souls as well as metals and societies (1972: 68, 182–90). In the seventeenth century, ‘All the world’s a stage’, was not just a phrase from Shakespeare, but ‘a normal piece of mental furniture’ (1972: 182). Thus the created world, a sect like the Rosicrucians, literary texts, and the human mind could all be seen as theatres,13 and in some alchemical works the macrocosmic theatre of the universe intersects with the microcosmic theatre of the mind. Entering into Jerusalem is like entering into the words and images in Heinrich Khunrath’s Amphitheatricum Sapientiae Aeternae. It is like embarking upon the spiritual journeys presented by Johann Valentin Andreae. It involves melding Druid legend with Christianity as in Elias Ashmole’s Theatricum Chemicum Britannicum, and may be influenced by the esoteric engravings in Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens, as it is by the imaginative theology of Jacob Boehme. Spiritual alchemists create texts in which the stage is the cosmos and the mind. Like Blake’s, their texts require imaginative interaction. They seek to inspire revelations about nature, humanity, and the divine.14 Reading such works can help us feel more comfortable with Jerusalem. Khunrath’s Amphitheatricum (1595) is a series of engravings with cryptic Latin and Hebrew words encircling a central visual image. His composite art turns readers into interactive spectators, leading us through images of the alchemist’s furnace, the wisdom of the hermaphrodite, the nature of the four (and the three, two, and one). Then the cosmic rose appears where Christ is crucified and resurrected simultaneously. Blake may never have encountered this text, but Jerusalem is less baffling when placed in its visionary company. The ‘Great City of Golgonooza’ (J12) which Los builds throughout Blake’s poem can be seen as a comprehensive amphitheatre of images; its bright sculptures contain ‘All things acted on Earth’ (J16:61). Andreae’s Chymical Wedding, like Jerusalem, moves its readers through a montage of apocalyptic imagery. Andreae was at Heidelberg when Pareus was lecturing (Yates 1972: 201) and I wonder if his ‘sevenfold’ story might not be influenced by Pareus’ exegesis. Andreae’s Chymical Wedding (1616), one of the central manifestos of the Rosicrucians,15 hinges on the liminality of life and death, apocalypse and creation. In Andreae’s multifaceted romance, 13 See Belden Lane (2001: 2–24) for the Calvinist use of the notion that creation is the theatre of God’s glory. In the twenty-first-century hospitals have ‘operating theatres’; theoretical physicists use theatrical metaphors when considering microcosmic (quantum) and macrocosmic (relativity) relationships (Smolin 2001: 25); the Pentagon creates ‘theatres of war’—which can extend beyond the ionosphere. 14 For more about spiritual alchemy, see Versluis (1999: 235–46). 15 The Rosicrucian ‘Fraternity of the Rosy Cross’ is a secret society of mystics, probably founded in Germany in the seventeenth century. (See Yates 1972 for a detailed discussion of their history and manifestos.)

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Christian Rosenkreutz (aged over 100) receives an invitation to the Royal Chymical Wedding and undertakes a seven-day journey to the Marriage where he faces seven trials. On the fourth day, a seven-act play depicts the redemption of a harlot-bride and culminates in the actual beheading of six Royal Persons, whose funeral features seven caskets: one is a little chest surmounted by a Phoenix. Seven flames pass over the sea; a golden globe reveals a snow-white egg from which a rainbow bird hatches who allows himself to be killed. The King and Queen finally marry, but Christian, the devoted knight, must swap places with the doorkeeper, for he inadvertently espied Venus naked. Reading the Chymical Wedding is a bit like reading Jerusalem. It leads us into a shivaree of strange images and cannot be defined in terms of simple allegory. Aspiring Rosicrucians still try to explain it.16 Like Jerusalem, Andreae’s Wedding is a text into which you enter. You cannot define it; it seeks to change you. Ashmole’s Theatricum includes riddles and poems detailing the erotics of chemistry and cosmology. Without the commingling of the male sol and female luna no cosmos can be. The world Sabbath approaches. As in Jerusalem, Albion sleeps for 6,000 years to reawaken to divine life. In the Theatricum’s ‘Prolegomena’, Ashmole states that time and poetry both begin with the Druids. He cites Pliny to show that ‘English Druid Magick’ was superior to the Chaldean; England was ‘Schoole-Mistris to France’; ancient Druid wisdom surpassed that of other cultures (1652: Pro.A3). This imaginative approach to history resembles Jerusalem’s, where ‘all things begin and end in Albion’s ancient Druid rocky shore’ (J27, 32:15). Blake may have heard of Ashmole when engraving for the Society of Antiquaries, for Ashmole was one of their founders. He was also an alchemist, a Rosicrucian, and one of the first Freemasons in England.17 Ashmole may have been inspired by Michael Maier, a Lutheran physician and alchemist often credited with bringing Rosicrucianism to England (Yates 1972: 109–10).18 Maier is best known for an emblem book called Atalanta Fugiens and Keri Davies suggests that Blake had access to it in the library of Alexander Tilloch, a Rosicrucian journalist, book collector, and scientist. Blake signed a petition in support of Tilloch’s forgery-proof engraving invention, and they had common friends and theological interests. Tilloch’s library included apocalyptic commentaries and a 1617 edition of Maier’s greatly admired book (Davies 2003: 139–41).19

16

Internet searches produce marvelous honorable nonsense. See Westcott (1894: 41–3); Jacob (1981: 116–17); Evans (1954: 54). 18 Maier’s Rosicrucian rule book, Themis Aurea, is said to have influenced subsequent Masonic ritual (Westcott 1894: 41–3). 19 Tilloch knew the Varleys, Tathams, and probably the Linnells. 17

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Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens is like a visual oratorio. Its fifty plates combine words, engravings, and music. Nelson Hilton thinks Atalanta’s Emblem I inspired the frontispiece to Blake’s Milton (1983: 214).20 Davies asserts that the emblematic designs surrounding Maier’s title were ‘borrowed by Blake for the woman plucking mandrake children from the earth in Gates of Paradise’ (2003: 197). I think several Atalanta emblems could inform Jerusalem’s visual and verbal imagery. Maier’s eighth Emblem, ‘a Philosopher’s Egg’, is like the Mundane Shell Los builds in Jerusalem, and the fiery sword with which Maier’s Egg shall be smitten is akin to the hot spiritual sword Los forges (J9:18). Maier’s Emblem XVII depicts four globes of fire, the fourfold fires which the alchemist uses to pass by the corporeal Dragon, like the globe Los holds (J1) as he descends into Albion’s interior, eventually confronting the ‘Dragon red and hidden harlot’ (J75). Maier’s twentieth emblem shows a naked virgin sending an armoured knight into apocalyptic fire; in Blake, Vala’s naked daughters send Albion’s warriors into flaming battle (J66–8). And Maier’s final emblem, a woman entwined by a serpent-dragon, may be the prototype not only for Satan’s seduction of Eve in Blake’s Paradise Lost painting (Davies 2003: 200) but also for the naked daughter enwrapped by a serpent-worm in Jerusalem’s Plate 63. Alchemists at their forge in Atalanta’s Emblems X and XVII may have influenced the character of Los, Blake’s prophetic blacksmith. Like Maier’s alchemists, Los can be likened to Hephaistos or Vulcan—and to Ezekiel’s Watchman, the British Bard, and Thor (Paley 1983: 234–43). Our heroic blacksmith is also akin to Tubal-Cain, the antediluvian metal worker praised by Jacob Boehme and featured in Masonic ritual (Jachin 1790).

Jacob Boehme—Prophetic Progenitor Boehme’s imaginative theology is only occasionally overtly theatrical, but it is extremely helpful in illuminating some of Jerusalem’s puzzling imagery. Boehme describes micro- and macrocosmic dramas (among planets and within human souls); he sees characters from the Old and New Testaments overlapping synchronically; sometimes he inserts himself or readers into a biblical text or piece of exegesis. We do not know whether Blake ever read Maier’s Atalanta or Ashmole’s Theatricum, but he acknowledges Boehme as a prophetic progenitor. I shall discuss Boehme’s complex works in the context of his own life, and in relation to Jerusalem. Blake often uses and sometimes reshapes Boehme’s ideas and imagery. I consider both their similarities and differences.21 20

Cited in Davies (2003: 196). Raine (1968), Aubrey (1986), and Fischer (2004) establish parallels between Blake’s work and Boehme’s, but they do not focus on Jerusalem or grapple with how Blake opposes Boehme, especially in matters erotic. I discuss this opposition in Chapter 3. 21

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In 1800 Blake wrote of his progenitors to his good friend, John Flaxman: Milton lov’d me in childhood . . . Ezra came with Isaiah the Prophet, but Shakespeare in riper years gave me his hand; Paracelsus and Behmen appear’d to me, terrors appear’d . . . The American War began (K799)

Blake’s letter indicates that these poets and prophets came to him before 1775,22 before his eighteenth birthday. Paracelsus and Behmen may have ‘appeared’ to him through his work with James Basire. Also Blake’s mother may have known of Boehme, for before Blake was born she belonged to the Moravian church and the Moravian fellowships in her native Yorkshire grew out of Behmenist study groups.23 Frederick Tatham notes that Blake owned works by Boehme (Bentley 1969: 41). This was probably the William Law edition, for the journalist Crabb Robinson recounts how Blake told him that ‘Michelangelo could not have done better’ than ‘the figures in Law’s translation’ and that Boehme was ‘divinely inspired’ (BR423). Blake praises Paracelsus and Boehme in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (K158). Both Blake and Boehme imaginatively recast apocalyptic imagery. In Boehme’s vision, apocalyptic angels break their seals to instigate ‘the Birth of the Eternal Nature’ (TL3.44). Apocalypse is creation. Like Jerusalem, portions of Boehme’s work unfold in what Frye calls ‘the space between Revelation and Genesis’ (1947: 389). In Eternity what looks like the end can be the beginning. This is a place of human and cosmic transformation. Jacob Boehme (1575–1624), a lifelong Lutheran, grew up on a farm and became a shoemaker in Gorlitz, a prosperous small city. Shortly after the birth of his first son in 1600, Boehme had a vision. He saw the light of God with what Blake would call his inward eyes.24 In this Aurora, this rose-gold dawn, Boehme says ‘my spirit did break through the Gates of Hell even into the innermost Birth or Geniture of the Deity and there I was embraced with Love as a Bridegroom embraces his dearly beloved Bride . . . ’ (A19.10). By 1612 manuscript copies of Boehme’s treatise, The Aurora, were circulating privately. Here Boehme first describes his sevenfold fire-world, a system based on a dynamic of contraries in elemental tension between micro- and macrocosmic wrath/fire and love/light. The wrath/love tension manifests itself in seven spirits of God. In The Aurora, three principles—sharpness (#1), the sweet (#2), and the bitter or astringent (#3)—create a wheel of fire (#4), furiously whirling in what he later calls ‘angst’ until a crack like lightning (#5) opens into melodious tone (#6); then spiritual essence becomes embodied (#7). 22 23 24

The American Revolution began in April, 1775. Private correspondence with G.E. Bentley, 4 June 2004. Unless otherwise noted, Boehme’s biographical information comes from Stoudt (1957).

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Divine light shines (A7–11). In God, the seven (fountain) spirits continually create one other, kissing and singing in life and joy (A13.94). Boehme tells us that God is like Ezekiel’s ‘wheels in one another . . . an unsearchable light and clarity’ (A3.20–1). Yet the fountain spirits can become unbalanced. If any element seeks to exalt itself, wrath/fire sparks, as happens within Lucifer in Boehme’s vision. It can also happen within human souls, relationships, or communities; it happens in Blake’s Albion. It is possible to fight against this wrath, but only if we are clothed in meekness and love. In Blake’s Jerusalem, starry wheels of wrath, revolving in anguish and furiously flaming in war, tear Albion apart, internally (as a person) and externally (as a polity). Prophetic Los,25 redeeming Albion, forges Golgonooza, a city of art, filled with mystical gates, sevenfold forms, sevenfold enormities, and sevenfold ice in seven furnaces of beryl (J13; J42). He repeatedly wrestles with his own love and wrath. In Boehme’s visions, turning wrath into love requires heroic humility—and erotic purity. Boehme exhorts his readers to be in the heart of God, who is the source of all being. In 1612 Gorlitz’s unimaginative pastor condemned The Aurora and insisted that Boehme be banished. After a brief exile Boehme satisfied the magistrates as to his orthodoxy, but he was forbidden to write again. He managed to desist until 1618, but he then felt divinely compelled. Encouraged by well-educated friends, Boehme privately produced The Three Principles of Divine Essence which reinterprets Genesis, dramatically depicting how Adam loses his celestial feminine counterpart, falls into sleep, and finally loses Paradise. Unfallen Adam contains both masculine and feminine, as does Blake’s Albion who banishes his feminine counterpart and falls into a sleep of death. Boehme tells his readers to ‘see the Lily’, an image recurring throughout his works. The Lily or ‘chaste Virgin of the Eternal Wisdom’ holds in her heart a precious pearl (TP16.32). Blake’s Jerusalem, when commingling in Beulah with her shadowy counterpart, Vala, is called ‘the Lily of Havilah’ (J19:41–2; 28i). Blake’s sense that various states can exist simultaneously and that apocalypse engenders creation could have been inspired by ideas in Boehme’s subsequent treatise, The Threefold Life of Man, written about 1620 when Gorlitz was occupied by the Calvinist Frederick V. Many felt that the Thirty Years War heralded Christ’s coming. Secret societies arose. Noble Christian alchemists encouraged Boehme to keep writing.26 In his Threefold Life Boehme declares: ‘the Revelation has been sealed until now’. To explicate Revelation Boehme conflates it with creation. Boehme explicitly links his creation spirits, the Seven Spirits of Divine Nature, with the Seven Spirits of Los’s great hammer is akin to the hammer Boehme relates to ‘the Spirit of God’ (TL18.48–9). Paley discusses Los’s alchemical tools (1970: 255–7). 26 For a discussion of Boehme’s friendships with the von Tsesch family, with Carl von Ender, and Balthasar Walther, see Stoudt (1957: chs 6 and 7) and Hirst (1964: 84–7). 25

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God in Revelation 4. He tells us to see ‘a glassy sea . . . see the Seventh Spirit of Divine Nature . . . turned into Meekness where the light shineth’. These seven spirits burn in both John’s Apocalypse and in Genesis, where ‘God created the Heavens’ (TL5.10–13). Heaven, earth, and hell coexist simultaneously; we have access to all three worlds—in Boehme, and in Blake. Jerusalem’s orator declares: ‘Heaven, Earth, & Hell henceforth shall live in harmony’ (J3:10). Boehme’s Threefold Life inserts his readers into John’s Apocalypse. He says: ‘Revelation very finely portrayeth us27 as an abominable Beast, like a Dragon with seven heads and ten horns’ (TL3.61). We participate in Babylon, the false bride who says: ‘I am your God, set me upon you’ (TL3.77). Blake’s Vala (who dwells within us as well is in the poem) is also called Babylon, the false bride who whispers seductively: ‘look upon me. I alone am Beauty’ (J33:48). Vala is also called the ‘Goddess Nature’ (J93:24), displacing Jerusalem and Jesus in Albion. In Boehme, deliverance from the Great Whore involves breaking ‘this chain, the Center of Nature in sunder’ and kindling internal apocalyptic fire ‘like a flaming Iron’ (TL8.10). That fire can turn wrath into love and lead to ‘the Liberty’ contiguous with Divine Wisdom. Boehme exhorts his readers to be converted from rationality and enter ‘into the Spirit of the Mother’, who is like the garment of God (TL5.50–78). Blake’s Jerusalem is called ‘Liberty’ (J26i, 54:5) and the Divine Vision’s garment (J54:3); she moves humanity from wrath back to love. She is the mother of myriads and must face the great dragon (J89)—like Boehme’s Mother ‘who is big with child’, crowned with twelve stars (TL10.8), like the Woman Clothed with the Sun in Revelation 12. In Boehme the Antichrist28 wants to devour us with its dragon-mouth (TL11.92); but if we choose we can be like children and ‘go into the garden of Roses’ (TL11.112). We are created to rejoice in peace. War serves Satan. In Boehme’s vision, warmongers serve the harlot beast. They destroy the temple of Christ, like Blake’s ‘Religion hid in War, a Dragon red and hidden Harlot’ (J75). Boehme writes: ‘God has not been the Author of Wars, for he created us that we should dwell together in Paradise and friendly love’ (TL12.43). In Jerusalem Blake declares: ‘The Religion of Jesus, Forgiveness of Sin, can never be the cause of a War’ (J52). Between 1621 and his death in 1624 Boehme wrote eight additional treatises and several letters, reiterating his seven fire forms with variations, re-examining Adam’s fall, elaborating upon the Virgin Sophia, and creating complex synchronisms. The human, the angelic, the divine, the elements, and the planets interweave in weird patterns. Strange images, dramatic scenes, and cosmic diagrams intertwine in Boehme’s writings—as they do in Blake’s.29 27

Italics added. ‘Antichrist’ appears in 1 John 2.18–4.3 and 2 John 1.7; Boehme (like many others) conflates these Epistles with Revelation. 29 Versluis discusses the spiral structure of theosophical writings (1999: 153). 28

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In his Treatise on the Incarnation (1620–1621) Boehme’s images tumble over each other; he describes the Mirror of Divine Wisdom, the plenitude/ abyss which is also the ‘Virgin-like Matrix’ or Sophia, who is the ‘LookingGlass’ of Wisdom, the Holy Spirit (TI II.1.30–50). Here he cautions his readers against ‘Earthly Imagination’, for it ‘destroys the right Virginity’ (TI I.6.65), a notion found nowhere in Blake. In Jerusalem, virginity obstructs divine vision, and ‘Imagination’ is another name for the Divine Body (J60:57, 70:19), a Body that includes all earthly things (J98–9). Blake’s Babylon harlot is the cold virgin Vala, negating imagination and promoting war. His Jerusalem, emanating liberty and forgiveness, loves freely in naked beauty. Erotic joy is integral to human divinity (J97–8). It is with such joy that Emanations create connections within human souls, between people, communities, nature, the cosmos, and God. However, an Emanation in Blake has something in common with the ‘Signature’ in Boehme’s Signatura Rerum (c.1622). This treatise explores how inner and outer worlds interrelate, how essential ‘Signatures’ connect or coinhere with others (in the human soul and out in the cosmos). So it is in Jerusalem, where ‘what is within is without’ (J12). In Boehme the ‘Signature’ creates commingling, as an Emanation ideally does in Blake’s poem, allowing us to expand and dwell with and within one another. Boehme explains that with the Signature a man ‘enters into another Man’s Form and awakens also in the other such a Form . . . so that both Forms mutually assimilate together in one Form’ (SR1.3). In Jerusalem When in Eternity Man converses with Man, they enter Into each other’s Bosom (which are Universes of delight) In mutual interchange, and first their Emanations meet . . . if they embrace and comingle The Human Four-fold forms mingle also in thunders of Intellect (J88:2–7).

That mingling culminates in a great song (J99). It resembles Boehme’s description of ‘the true Human Harmony’ where that which ‘makes Anguish and Strife’ now ‘makes joy’, with every living thing tuned ‘into a peculiar Instrument . . . composed together in one Musick’ (SR15.44, 47). In this music, all living forms ‘are only One in the divine eternal speaking Word’ (SR16.3–5). In Blake’s poem, ‘even Tree, Metal, Earth & Stone’ awaken, rejoicing in the Song of Jerusalem (J99). This awakening happens when Selfhood is lost. The word ‘Selfhood’ is first recorded in the English language in Ellistone’s translation of Boehme (1649).30 In Boehme, Selfhood destroys the balance between life principles (A13)—as it does in Blake. Albion’s Selfhood shatters 30 Paley (1970: 154) cites Professor Jacques Roos’ discovery that ‘Selfhood’ first appeared in the English language in Boehme’s works (Aspects littéraires du mysticisme philosophique, p. 92). See also the Oxford English Dictionary.

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him internally and externally; Selfhood divides Zoas and Emanations, immobilizing humanity in ‘a sleep of death’. Boehme writes of his own spiritual awakening, how it hinges on seeing that ‘Christ died to my Self-hood in his death and I also die to my Self-hood in my death’ (SR12.14). A similar realization awakens Blake’s Albion; when he sees how Jesus destroys Selfhood, his spirit and body both change (J96). In Boehme, spiritual awakening results in a crystalline body; in Blake we become infinitely translucent, partaking of human–divine consummation. In both Boehme and Blake the burning world melds with sacred marriage; but the nature of that marriage differs (as we shall see when we discuss Jerusalem’s character). In 1622 and 1623 Boehme wrote his longest and most linear book, Mysterium Magnum, where he explores Genesis, relating its characters (from Adam to Joseph) typologically to the Book of Revelation and to Christ in the Gospels. In Boehme, the New Testament may do more than fulfil the Old: the two worlds run simultaneously—as heaven, earth, and hell do, inwardly and outwardly. God’s ‘Eternal speaking Word’ is not confined by linear time (MM1.7–10). Ultimately all senses, a ‘harmony of Seeing, Feeling, Tasting and Smelling’, join together in ‘the true intellective Life’ to ‘embrace each other in the Sound . . . When they penetrate each other they mutually awaken’ (MM5.12). In Jerusalem’s Fourfold Vision, the nerves of the eye, nostrils, ear, and tongue expand ‘in beautiful Paradises’ (J98:15–25). Blake’s fourfold man enjoys ‘Creating Space, Creating Time’ (J98:31). Boehme may be doing something similar in his exegetical synchronisms. He conflates Ezekiel, Revelation, Genesis, and his own divine vision in one sentence: ‘We heard a Watchman say: “Awake!” The Beast with the Whore which stood upon the earth in Naamah’s stead is quite fallen and given to the Press of the Seven-fold Racha31!’ (MM29.66). As in his earlier works, Boehme links those who cause wars with the apocalyptic whore. In Mysterium Magnum she manifests herself throughout Genesis. For instance, Reuben’s liaison with Bilhah (Gen.36, 49) makes him a figure of ‘Adamical whoredom’. He fills Bilhah, who is ‘nothing else but the Stone Churches of Europe’ with ‘false fleshy seed’ as learned divines ‘generate bastards in God’s concubine’ (MM63.33–9). But Blake condemns neither Bilhah nor Dinah, whom Boehme cites as another example of ‘Christendom in whoredom’ (MM62). Blake connects Dinah with his outcast Jerusalem, grieving and isolated. He also likens Dinah to Erin, a wise and salvific figure throughout his poem (J74:52–5). In 1623 Boehme also wrote Of the Election of Grace where he compares the cosmos and a human being to ‘a great Clock-Work’ in which the spirits of the four elements attract each other and matter draws downwards, compelled

31

‘Racha’ relates to ‘Rache’, meaning ‘vengeance’ in German.

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‘towards the Earth’ (EG5.56). God has ‘no predestinate purpose to Evil’, Boehme declares, and every power has ‘an Emanation . . . in the Speaking Word’. Every power can freely choose love or wrath, fire or light (EG5.45). But Blake reacts against clockwork imagery; his divine cosmos resembles the wheels within wheels which Boehme describes in his Aurora vision. Blake’s sense of universal forgiveness is also akin to The Aurora’s where Boehme suggests (in 1612) that Lucifer ought to ‘go before Christ and ask for a kiss from God’ (A13.58–61). Eleven years later, living in wartime (in 1623), Boehme writes about ‘thistle-children’, people whose Wills are ‘a living Devil’ though they may take ‘the form or likeness of an Angel’ (EG9.191). Such souls (especially among clergy and academics) like ‘the Whore together with the Beast, are hardened in their Lusts of Pride’ (EG11.57). They cannot repent; they are incapable of humbly seeking Christ (EG9.191). Boehme’s Discourse Between A Soul Hungry and Thirsty After the Sweet Fountain of Life (1624) is like a medieval mystery play. The devil seduces a weak Soul; Jesus appears to save it; the Devil again tempts the Soul which crashes into misery. An Enlightened Soul then comes to inspire repentance. The miserable Soul struggles, glimpses Sophia, and falls again, now doubly miserable. The Enlightened re-enters, exhorting the poor Soul to hunger meekly for grace; Selfhood severs us from grace. In the first plates of Jerusalem, Blake himself prays: ‘O Saviour pour upon me thy spirit of Meekness and Love / Annihilate the Selfhood in me, be thou all my Life’ (J5:21–2). Boehme’s Treatise of The Four Complexions describes how each of his four personality types (the standard ‘humours’: choleric, melancholic, sanguine, phlegmatic) faces different obstacles when seeking Divine Vision. All must persist intrepidly to achieve ‘the betrothing or espousal with the Virgin Sophia, the Precious Humanity of Christ’ (FC7.16). Boehme’s humanity, like Blake’s, is fourfold: his, has four ‘Complexions’; Blake’s, has four Zoas (embodying reason, imagination, primal drives, emotion). In 1624 Boehme’s high-placed friends published an edition of what became one of his most popular works, The Way to Christ. Boehme’s ‘disobedience’ enraged his pastor who incited a mob to attack his house. Boehme was banished again, but within two weeks he returned to Görlitz, defended himself, and then went to Dresden to be examined. There the architect/alchemist Privy Councillor von Loss entertained him in his magnificent Renaissance palace.32 Boehme’s observations and answers pleased the Elector, but when he returned to Görlitz he probably had pneumonia. As Jacob Boehme lay dying he told his family that he heard beautiful music. He blessed them and said: ‘Now I go hence to Paradise’ (Law: xxii). He was forty-nine.

32 Weeks (1991: 213–14). Did Boehme admire ‘the bright sculptures of Loss’ halls’? (See J16:61.)

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For Boehme, ‘Heaven is every where present . . . it is but the turning in of the Will into the Love of God’ (WC IV.p98). Boehme’s Way To Christ seeks to help readers dwell in the love of God through what is called ‘Self-annihilation’ in Jerusalem.33 Boehme longs to be kissed by the noble Sophia; his soul cries to the Virgin: ‘Stay in me and inclose me in thee . . . awaken my disappeared image in thee’ (WC I.p19). He prays, ‘Manifest thy Holy City Zion, thy holy Jerusalem in us’ (WC I.p23). Similarly, Blake seeks to make Jerusalem manifest within his readers and in society. Reading Boehme helps illuminate Jerusalem’s cosmology and some of its allusive imagery. In Boehme and in Blake, inner and outer worlds interrelate; love and wrath contend in the macrocosmic universe and in the microcosmic soul. Of course, since Blake’s vision is unique, he (like his predecessors34) reconfigures the imagery in the books he loved and in the culture surrounding him. Apocalyptic imagery was not uncommon in Blake’s London. Thousands thought the second coming was at hand, especially the followers of popular prophets like Richard Brothers and Joanna Southcott. Secret societies arose. The visionary theatre of Freemasonry literally paraded down the street where Blake lived as an apprentice, and influenced eighteenth-century popular culture (Prescott 2003a). Blake draws upon the imagery of the Masonic neighbors of his youth, reconfiguring it as he challenges Natural and Moral Law throughout Jerusalem.

Freemasonry and Jerusalem Some Masonic historians and Blake scholars35 consider Freemasonry’s influence upon Blake, but rarely in relation to Jerusalem. Hamill and Gilbert’s official Masonic history declares: ‘William Blake is a classic instance of someone who took the symbols of Freemasonry and used them to supreme effect within his own strange symbol system’ (1998: 152). Like his Masonic neighbors Blake uses the image of the compass, temple-building, pillars, the architect, and the metal-worker (Peterfreund 1990; Sorensen 1995). The hammer and hand are also important in Jerusalem and in Freemasonry. Europe’s36 frontispiece, often called ‘The Ancient of Days’, can be seen by Masons as their Great Architect of the Universe (Schuchard 1999: 173). In his 33 Mee suggests that Blake derives ‘Self-annihilation’ from Hartley’s Observations on Man; Hartley was influenced by Boehme (2003: 287). However, Mme. Guyon also uses this term. Blake honors her (J72:50) and disparages Hartley (K394). 34 We have seen how Boehme draws upon a variety of biblical sources—as John on Patmos alludes to images in much of the Hebrew Bible in his Revelation. 35 Blake scholars include: Peterfreund (1990, 1998); Rix (2002); Schuchard (1992, 1998, 1999); Sorensen (1995). 36 Blake created this illuminated book in 1794.

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‘Song of Liberty’ Blake recasts the Masonic epithet, ‘free and accepted brethren’, to liberate those who (as in Masonic ritual) ‘lay the bound or build the roof ’ (K160).37 Blake’s master, James Basire, was an engraver to the Society of Antiquaries and also to the Royal Society, both founded by Ashmole who became a Mason in 1646. Hamill and Gilbert assert that Basire was ‘certainly a member of the Craft’ (1998: 152), but I have found no documentary evidence to support this.38 I shall now discuss how what was publicly known (and conjectured) about Freemasonry may illuminate Jerusalem. Masonic Lodges are like little visionary theatre companies. Masons do not stand outside their ‘text’;39 they embody it. The eighteenth-century best-seller, Jachin and Boaz40 reveals that Freemasonry involves enacting different aspects of Masonic myth. The brethren enter into their prototypes, dramatically portraying the Great Architect, Tubal Cain, Solomon, Hiram, or Zerubabbel. All rebuild Babel and Solomon’s Temple, sharing ritual handshakes as they move through ‘degrees’—from candidate to master and beyond.41 A.E. Waite, a high-ranking Mason in the early twentieth century, writes that the ritual ‘is dealing no longer with allegory . . . we are carried back therefore into a living past . . . each who is present fulfils a part therein. It is therefore a dramatic pageant instead of a typological mystery’ (1925: 93). Hamill and Gilbert call this transformational drama ‘a true rite of passage’, citing Eliade’s notions of initiation: ‘the preliminary state of separation . . . the transitional stage, which involves ritual trials and disorientation . . . and the final stage when the initiate is integrated into a wholly new condition’. The initiate enters into ‘the universal symbol of building the temple within’ (1998: 78–9, 92). This could describe a way of reading Jerusalem: we can enter into Albion’s isolation, Los’s trials and errors, the chaos of war, Jerusalem’s agonies, and the great 37 Schuchard (1995) and Rix (2002) think this demonstrates Blake’s support for radical Freemasonry. Schuchard creatively arranges circumstantial evidence to place Blake in the salon of the ‘mystical Mason’ and transvestite, the Chevalier D’Eon (1992: 53), and in the ‘Cabalistic’ circles of the self-styled Count Cagliostro (1995) who concocted an Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry. She thinks Blake’s father was a Freemason but the ‘James Blake’ on the 1757 lodge register she mentions (1998: 16) could have been any one of the many James Blakes in London at the time. 38 Masonic records were not carefully kept until 1799. 39 According to a Freemason (12 May 2004, Freemason’s Tavern, London) the text is not written; it is transmitted orally through dramatic enactment. 40 This popular exposé remained continually in print from 1761 to 1800. The anonymous author apparently gained entrance to many Lodges by knowing the ritual, passwords, and legends of Freemasonry that he shares with the general public. A Masonic pamphlet acknowledges Jachin’s correctness in ‘the manner of receiving a Brother’ and repeatedly calls its author ‘the common enemy of mankind’ for his dastardly oath-breaking and/or fraud (Freemason’s Answer 1762). 41 Conversation with Pierre Yves Beaurepaire, after his talk on eighteenth-century European Freemasonry at the Voltaire Foundation, Oxford, 24 January 2005. Scottish Rite or Royal Arch Masonry includes 33 degrees, each with their own ritual, such as the Rose-Croix (18th) or Patriarch Noachite (21st).

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awakening. Blake’s Jerusalem dwells within Albion and within every living thing (J98–9). Blake would have been especially aware of Masonic theatricality in 1775 and 1776 when the Freemason’s Tavern and Hall was dedicated and consecrated, for this was done with pomp and circumstance directly opposite Basire’s studio and home on Great Queen Street. The ‘Foundation Stone’ ceremony on May 1, 1775 involved ‘a numerous and brilliant Company of Masons’, including ‘an excellent Band of Martial Music’ as well as ‘Grand Stewards . . . Provincial Grand Masters and Past Grand Officers’ all clad in full Masonic regalia. While an anthem praising ‘Heaven’s high Architect’ filled the air (Institutes 1788: 75–7), the Grand Master ‘struck the Stone three times with a Mallet’ (perhaps prefiguring Los with his hammer at ‘London Stone’ (J6–8, 94:24)). Just over a year later, on May 23, 1776, an even greater and more brilliant company processed to the new Hall, accompanied by ‘above sixty instrumental and thirty vocal Performers’ and ‘upwards of 160 Ladies’ for the dedication ceremony. The Freemasons processed into their Hall carrying many sacred objects, including golden compasses, the Bible, and two Masonic Lights (Institutes 1788: 79–81). In this new Hall several lodges met on a regular basis.42 The Freemason’s Tavern was open to the public. As this was the tavern closest to the studio, it is reasonable to assume that Basire’s apprentices went there to fetch his beer.43 Its inn housed respectable European travellers (Moritz 1795: 264) and the hall could be rented for charity events, such as a Messiah performance to raise funds for a dispensary44 or the Artist’s Fund dinner Blake attended there in 1810 (BR615). The tavern and hall became the meeting place for radical political groups such as The London Corresponding Society, the Society for Constitutional Information,45 and Friends to Freedom of the Press (Adams 1793: 185), which were inspired by the American Revolution, whose chief architects (‘Washington, Hancock, [possibly] Paine & Warren, Gates, Franklin & Green’46) were Freemasons. Thousands of men in white leather

42

Boyle’s View of London (1799) lists nine lodges meeting there. After 1773 Basire had one other apprentice, James Parker, who went into business with Blake from 1784 to 1785 (BR34–5). As interns now fetch coffee, apprentices were sent out for beer; a nineteenth-century apprentice complained that he spent too much time fetching beer and making tea (Lane 1996: 77). Benjamin Franklin called the London printers with whom he worked ‘great Guzzlers of Beer’ (1968: 49–50). 44 Advertisement: ‘For the Benefit of the Ossulston Dispensary, At Freemason’s Hall, Great Queen Street . . . The Messiah . . . ’ (1788). Eighteenth Century Collections Online http://galenet. galegroup.co accessed10/2005. 45 For allusions to their radical activities see Paine (1793: 30); Hardy (1794: 99); London Corresponding Society (1783: 2); Society of Friends of the People (1794: 2); Whig’s Apology (1795: 47). Jacob (1981: 171–5; 263) touches upon John Wilkes’ Masonic connections. 46 From America a:4, K203. For Lodge records, see Denslow (1957) (an alphabetical directory). Only Paine’s Lodge membership lacks tangible proof. 43

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aprons from all walks of life were, in their rituals and songs, building Jerusalem temples in England’s green land—and throughout the world. Several hundred lodges existed in the greater London area in the late eighteenth century.47 A lodge could include a bricklayer, a baronet, a clergyman, a few gentlemen, and a plumber, as well as painters and engravers, all eating and drinking together as brothers.48 William Hogarth (1697–1764) was Grand Steward of England’s Grand Lodge (Hamill and Gilbert 1998: 234). The engraver Bartolozzi, one of Blake’s contemporaries, belonged to The Lodge of Nine Muses in London (Hamill and Gilbert 1998: 227). Blake’s good friend Thomas Stothard was most probably a Freemason, for he painted at least one Masonic ceremony and such commissions were awarded to artists within the Brotherhood.49 The symbols, songs, and rituals of Freemasonry colored eighteenth-century popular culture. Before 1799, elaborate Masonic parades featuring music and banners emblazoned with the Lamb of God, the golden compasses, or the New Jerusalem wended their way through London’s streets.50 Excerpts from Masonic rituals, songs, and mythic histories abounded in books, magazine articles, pamphlets, and public lectures.51 These could be found throughout London, Britain, in Ireland, and in America. Some Lodges hosted ‘open nights’ (after secret rituals concluded) and at least one such Lodge met at the Freemason’s Tavern.52 Then, in 1799, Pitt’s Unlawful Societies Act regulated such activities. Street processions ceased, careful record keeping was required, and Freemasonry became more conservative and less publicly visible than it had been when Blake was a young man. Before 1799, entertainments with Masonic themes were popular. For instance, the 1781 Harlequin Freemason, highly praised for its magnificent pageantry, ran for a year to packed houses at Covent Garden, and successfully returned for shorter runs until 1796 (Hextall 1908). Comedians composed satires, parodying Masonic rituals. One satire includes the verse:

Boyle (1799) lists 562 Lodges. Some had been ‘erased’ (non-functioning). I perused hundreds of Lodge records in London searching in vain for Blake, Basire, and Paine. 49 Martin Cherry, librarian for the Library of Freemasonry, showed me a small copy of a Bartolozzi engraving of Stothard’s ‘Chevalier Bartholomew Ruspini leading the girls of the Masonic School for Girls in procession through the Grand Lodge’. It now hangs in the Grand Master’s apartments in London. Cherry writes that it includes: ‘HRH George, Prince of Wales GM, and HRH the Duke of York . . . probably painted after 1796 . . . We do not know which lodge Stothard was a member of.’ (private email, 22/09/2004). Many lodge books before 1799 are missing or incomplete. 50 Prescott (2003a) discusses Masonic processions and Levander (1912: 21) describes a 1787 parade. 51 e.g. Preston’s Illustrations—which were public lectures given in 1774. 52 e.g. ‘Grand Stewards’ Lodge, Freemason’s Tavern, Great Queen Street, Public Nights 3d Wednesday in March and December’ (Boyle 1799: 5, 14.) 47 48

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To the house of God from house of ale And how the parson told his tale How they return’d in manner odd To house of ale from house of God53

In this spoof (which sounds a bit like Blake’s ‘Little Vagabond’54) the inebriated Masonic Brethren cannot quite tell which St John (the Baptist or the Divine) they should be honoring. All Masonic lodges open in the name of St John; both saints are honored, conflated in one name (Horne 1962: 87–96). We find such conflation throughout Jerusalem. In Blake’s poem, Jerusalem (a city and a woman) overspreads the earth (J24, 79). When he was an apprentice, Blake probably knew that Masons were building Jerusalem in Boston, Heidelberg, Stockholm, Paris, the Hague, Moscow—as well as in the hall just opposite where he worked. Public Masonic processions celebrated synchrolocality; banners equated Solomon’s Temple with St Paul’s Cathedral (Levander 1912: 2155). Its architect Christopher Wren, a legendary Grand Master, is said to have intended to build a New Jerusalem out of the ruins of the Great Fire of London.56 Blake’s aesthetic, however, differs greatly from that of his Masonic neighbors. Freemasons, praising Palladio in one of their theme songs, call the cathedrals Blake loved ‘Gothick Rubbish’ (Anderson 1734: 81–7). In Blake ‘a Gothic Church is representative of true art’ (VLJ K610): the ‘Living Form’ of the Gothic (K778) is a manifestation of the art of imaginative Eden, whereas the ‘Mathematic Form’ of the neoclassical comes from Reason (K778) and can be a manifestation of Ulro. In Blake’s illuminated masterpiece, the architecture of Jerusalem is Gothic; that of fallen London is neoclassical (see J57).57 Throughout Jerusalem Blake conflates neoclassical architecture with Druid dragon temples, sites of bloody human sacrifice. This is not an arbitrary conflation; as we shall see in Chapter 5, some Antiquarians and Freemasons made similar conflations, but they ignored the legendary violence of the Druids.58 In his 1805 essay, ‘Origin of Freemasonry’, Tom Paine declares: ‘Masonry is the remains of the religion of the Druids’ (1945: 834). In their rituals and writings, Masons combine imagery from many traditions with an adoration of Divine Geometry and Natural Law. They revere 53 From Joseph Green’s Entertainment for a Wintry Evening: Being a Full and True Story of a Strange and Wonderful Sight (1750). Cited in Shield (1987: 113). 54 Blake’s ‘Little Vagabond’ (K216) sings: ‘ . . . But if at the Church they would give us some Ale / And a pleasant fire our souls to regale . . . ’. 55 Levander (1912) discusses a description of a parade in 1787. 56 Preston (1772: 210–16); also see www.masonicdictionary.com/ashlar.html. accessed 12/ 2009. No records of Wren’s initiation exist, but I was told by a physicist and past Master of the Lodge of Antiquity on 12 May 2004: ‘I’ve used Sir Christopher’s gavel!’ For a readable account of Wren’s legendary Masonic agenda, see Gilbert (2003). 57 For more about Blake and architecture, see Paley (1983a). 58 The Druid-Mason claim persists. See Herner (1979).

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Bacon, Locke, and especially Newton,59 the Deist Trinity against which Los strives throughout Jerusalem. When Blake challenges Deist theology he uses imagery that was popularly associated with Freemasonry. For instance, the frontispiece of Jachin and Boaz (1790) depicts a constellation of Masonic symbols, including many that can be found in Jerusalem: pillars, seven stars, a smiling sun and crescent moon, the hammer, the golden compass and the hand. But Blake uses these symbols to undermine the world view of the Masons. Here are some examples. When Los transforms the Spectre (who despises imagination) he shatters and transforms the Spectre’s pyramids, pillars, and stars (J91).60 The smiling sun and crescent moon with seven stars appear on Albion’s thigh as he is disemboweled (J25i).61 Los’s hammer battles against the tyranny imposed by abstract reasoning. Urizen (the great Architect) uses his compass to build a worldwide temple of Natural Religion that does not redeem humanity (J59, 66). Hand is one of Albion’s sons, a bellicose giant who hates imagination and spreads war. Yet even he can be transformed by the forgiveness of sins. What is human can change. Like his Masonic neighbors, Blake is building Jerusalem in order to transform individuals and societies, but his building project places reason in the service of imagination. The texts and rituals we have just considered all require imaginative interaction in order to transform those who encounter them. Visionaries like Michael Maier and Jacob Boehme use intriguing words and images to lift us beyond the mundane to divine understanding. The Freemasons require a theatrical embodiment of their mythic stories; it is through dramatic ritual that initiates are transformed (Waite 1925: 93–4). Like Masonic ritual, Blake’s ‘visionary forms dramatic’ (J98) invite us not merely to decode a simple allegory;62 they ask us to be changed by entering into what Blake calls a ‘Sublime Allegory’.

SUBLIME A LLEGORY— AND VISIONARY THEATRE Before etching Jerusalem, Blake wrote to Thomas Butts about creating ‘a Sublime Allegory . . . the Grandest Poem that this World Contains’ (K825). Yet in his notebook he denigrates allegories as ‘Things that Relate to Moral 59

Calcott (1769: 1–2, 84–92); Jacob (1981: 109–18); Prescott (2003: 191–3). Pyramids are praised in Masonic songs and featured on their seals and in Lodge décor—for Freemasons reputedly built the pyramids (Ahiman n.d.: 150, 157; Bredin 2001: 48). Prickett and Strathman link Blake’s pyramid imagery with eighteenth-century Masonic ritual (2006: 110). 61 A murderous apprentice is disemboweled in Masonic myth (Jachin 1790: 28–31). 62 When Waite asserts that Masonic ritual is dealing no longer with allegory he may mean that it is something like what Blake calls sublime allegory. Also see Hamill and Gilbert (1998: 78–80, 92). 60

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Virtues’ (K614). A ‘Sublime Allegory’ is not the same as a generic allegory. I think Blake’s idea of Sublime Allegory is like the way of reading described by St Augustine, who enjoins us to read Scripture on four levels: the literal, the allegorical, the moral, and the anagogical.63 In Augustine’s ‘fourfold’ reading, literal and (simple) allegorical insights lead to the moral imperative to transform souls and communities, and to the anagogical sense of connectedness with eternal wisdom—which in Jerusalem is called the Saviour’s Kingdom, the Divine Body. Using visionary theatre as an interpretative tool allows for fourfold reading. Visionary theatre (as I conceive it) does not deny the importance of literal and allegorical understanding. David Pareus’ theatrical ‘vision-divisions’, though clumsily applied to Revelation, help us see that Jerusalem presents the story of Albion’s calamity (Chapter One), several rescue attempts (Chapter Two), amplified violence (Chapter Three), and a final awakening (Chapter Four). Allegorically, the poem has been read in many ways: historically and politically (Erdman and Schorer), psychologically (Youngquist), psychosexually (Webster), mythopoetically (Frye), philosophically (Witke). Such readings are helpful because they illuminate some of the poem’s imagery, the characters’ motivations, and the settings in which action takes place. However, the poem asks us to do more than this. It seeks to change us and the world around us; it has what might be called a moral imperative. Because visionary theatre invites imaginative participation, it is an appropriate way of regarding a text that explicitly seeks to create transformation. Jerusalem’s audience is implicated in the action of the poem. Blake addresses his audience directly, both in each chapter’s preface, as well as in the body of the text.64 He wants us to ‘build Jerusalem’, to create societies in which forgiveness is a social structuring principle (J22:34–5; J52). But Blake’s Jerusalem is about more than social transformation; it is also about becoming human-divine. Because visionary theatre can be both microand macrocosmic, it can cope with the anagogical (the fourfold) aspect of Blake’s sublime allegory. Jerusalem includes microcosmic dramas within and between readers and characters, as well as macrocosmic dramas65 between 63

St Augustine (354–430 AD) affirmed and utilized fourfold reading (literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical) in On Christian Doctrine, a way of reading suggested by John Cassian (c.415) who used it to describe a fourfold Jerusalem. The actual city is also allegorically the church which morally transforms our souls. Anagogically, Jerusalem is our divine and heavenly living (Sklar 2005: 16–18). 64 e.g.: ‘ . . . & when you enter into their Bosoms you walk / In Heavens & Earths, as in your own Bosom you bear your Heaven’ (J71:16–17). 65 Jerusalem’s microcosmic action also includes excursions into the circulatory system (J29:72–6, 38:32–5), and into the immeasurably tiny (subatomic?) grain that opens into the world of Oothoon’s palace (J41:15–18). Macrocosmic action includes the rescue efforts of valleys, hills, rivers, cathedrals, and cities (J40), contentions between mountains, rivers, and cities (J66:58–70), and wars between stars (J55:27–8).

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nations, cities, ecosystems, and divine beings—which can happen simultaneously. Blake’s fourfold vision, in which trees, rocks, cities, Zoas, Emanations, and people participate in divine humanity (J98–9), is akin to Dante’s description of anagogy ‘in which things signified give intimation of higher matters belonging to the eternal glory’ (Convivio II, i.). In Blake’s vision, these ‘things’ are singing and acting and building as (and in) a human-divine body (J98–9). Northrop Frye’s understanding of Blake informs his insights in Anatomy of Criticism, where he calls the anagogical perspective apocalyptic, in that it reveals ‘the whole of nature as the content of an infinite and eternal living body’ (1957: 119). In Blake the infinite and eternal body is both a container and the thing contained; the outside is within and the inside is without (J12). Systems, structures, and creatures coinhere. The microscopic spirits conducting digestion or sleep (J3, 53:13) coinhere with telescopic human planets and stars (J6:1–4, 12:51, 50:20); capillaries are streams within us (within cities) inhabited by living creatures (J38i, 32–5); and rivers like the Thames and Jordan are a circulatory system, the bloodstream of Albion (J66:61), coinhering with Israel, a man and a land, all animating the bright sculptures of Golgonooza (J16:61), a city of art. Visionary theatre allows for the exploration of such coinherence. It allows readers to see how a character can be simultaneously an agent, acting and responding, and a setting where transformation occurs. Divine humanity is a person (like Jerusalem), a place (like Jerusalem), and a way of being, like the song of Jerusalem in which all things respond to and transform one another in forgiveness of sins. Blake’s readers, as well as his characters, are invited to participate in this transformational forgiveness. Reading the poem can be apocalyptic, which is to say, revelatory.

ENTERING APOCALYPTIC IMAGES In Jerusalem, apocalyptic transformation happens when Jesus is revealed to Albion, Selfhood shatters, and all can enter the bosom of God (J96–9). In visionary theatre, reader/spectators are not separated (by aesthetic or psychological distance)66 from such transformation. We can enter into Blake’s apocalypse. What Blake writes about his ‘Vision of the Last Judgment’ (in 1810) could also apply to the figures in Jerusalem: ‘If the Spectator could Enter into these Images in his Imagination, approaching them on the Fiery Chariot of his Contemplative Thought . . . or could make a Friend and Companion of one of 66 According to Bullough: ‘Distance is produced by . . . putting the phenomenon out of gear with our actual self; by allowing it to stand outside the context of our personal needs’ (1977: 759).

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these images of wonder . . . then he would arise from his Grave, then would he meet the Lord in the Air and then he would be happy’ (K611).67 In the same treatise he calls us to converse ‘with Eternal Realities’ (K613). This way of seeing and conversing is like how Eastern Orthodox believers regard an icon. The image is ‘a window to eternity’ (Limouris 1990: 3–4). According to Paul Evdokimov an icon is charged with a living presence (1990: 178), and, if it is thought to be an object, it is an object that determines or reveals the subject (1990: 25). The beauty of the image can spiritualize the senses so that they become like what they are sensing; the viewer is to participate in what Evdokimov calls the ‘theo-materialism’ whose beauty is made manifest in the forms of this world (1990: 28). In Blake’s poem, Jerusalem’s beauty must be revealed, unveiled, before Albion can awaken to self-annihilation and divine union (J86). When he can see the love of Christ made manifest in the form of his friend Los, a ‘Last Judgment’ passes upon him and he is changed, sensually and spiritually (J96–7). Like icons, Blake’s multifaceted characters are windows to eternity. Imaginative readers can enter into them as actors enter into the characters they embody onstage. Konstantin Stanislavski, founder of the Moscow Art Theatre, considered acting to be a visionary activity.68 He believes that ‘an actor is the priest of beauty and truth’ and that theatre was designed to ‘build the life of the human spirit’, transforming those who come to see it (Moore 1969: 4–11). He enjoins his actors to ‘become an image’ and ‘enter the paradise of art’ (Stanislavski 1924: 214) by paying particular attention to a character’s words, gestures, posture, historical context, motivations, and inner life. As in Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises, Method actors69 must move imaginatively from the self to visualize the particulars of the scene before them. Honoring what Blake calls Minute Particularity is at the heart of building a character. One must understand what characters are saying, where they are, and the imagery surrounding them. Blake’s characters are not ‘general forms’, not merely aspects of a universal humanity (J43:19, 91:30). Each has a story, overlapping in montage with the stories of others. They are to be experienced, and understanding the details of their Minute Particularity facilitates imaginative experience. The next three chapters consider the prophetic, poetic, and historical sources informing Jerusalem’s peculiar characters and how they move and change.

67

Echoing 1 Thess.4.17. For more about the spiritual (and incarnational) aspects of acting, see Alla BozarthCampbell (1974) and LeGallienne’s book about Duse (1965). 69 Actors guided by Stanislavski’s System can be called Method actors. Stanislavski’s System was not fixed or codified. Like Jerusalem it seems replete with ambiguity. The characters into which actors enter shape their approach. 68

2 Dramatis Personae This chapter explores the nature and interrelatedness of Jerusalem’s visionary (or ‘angelmorphic’) characters before briefly discussing how each is shaped and changes. The poem seems confusing because it contains a cast of billions: all living things are characters, and in Eden/Eternity all these characters interrelate. ‘Even tree, metal, earth, and stone’ are ultimately ‘human forms’ (J99:1–2), and the poem’s principal figures are uncannily dynamic. They can morph into one another, and they can be both a context and an individual. The context can be an outward cultural or political place, as when Albion is Britain or Luvah is called France. It can also be an inner (microcosmic) state of being: entering into Luvah can mean entering into a state of romantic and revolutionary energy; entering into Urizen includes entering his logical precision; entering Jerusalem involves entering into (and emanating) forgiveness and liberty. The inner microcosmic world and the outer macrocosm have character: they relate to one another, and we can relate to them. As individual personalities, Blake’s characters move through different perceptual states. As we have seen (see Introduction), these different modes of being are called Ulro/Satan, Generation, Beulah, and Eternity/Eden. Ulro/ Satan is a state of dehumanizing abstraction; Generation refers to the organic or vegetative cycles of birth, copulation, and death; Beulah is a romantic and emotional state. Beulah can lead back to Generation and Ulro—and it can open into the fourfold state of Eden/Eternity (towards which the whole poem strives), a state in which all living things, distinctly identified, creatively coinhere with one another. Ultimately each character dwells with and within all—in ‘differentiated unity’. The poem opens with Jesus singing: ‘I am in you and you in me mutual in love divine’ (J4:7). It ends with all living creatures emanating the divine music which is the ‘Song of Jerusalem’ (J99). The poem begins with a solo and ends with polyphony, but that polyphony is what Jesus sings from the beginning— for he is singing within every living being. In the human-divine song each character is distinct and they are all in ‘the Divine Body, the Saviour’s Kingdom’ (J3). In the Divine Body characters interpenetrate (coinhere) with one another; they are not confined by their bodies or their names. Ultimately

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everyone and everything (including the poet and reader) can coinhere in Jerusalem and in Jesus (who will each be discussed in separate chapters). But before examining individual characters it is helpful to discuss the nature of their coinherence, their differentiated unity.

ANGELMORPHIC CHARACTERS: THE ONE AND THE MANY Blake’s characters are singular individuals who dwell within each other as one great body. Albion is called ‘Humanity’ (J15:6) or the ‘Universal Man’ (J36:26). He and his Zoas and Emanations1 coinhere with Jesus. In ‘the Song of Jerusalem’ they all have one voice and they each have many voices. They are one, and they are many. It may be helpful to think of them as choruses. Albion has twelve sons and twelve daughters: a male and female chorus. Each of the daughters is an Emanation of one of the sons. When Albion fragments (i.e. separates himself from God and humanity), the Zoas and Emanations also fragment. A chorus of Eternals, occasionally embodied as cathedral cities, seek/s2 to save Albion. (They have something in common with the four and twenty elders around the divine throne in Revelation 4.) Each speaking character in Jerusalem is uniquely him- or herself; each has motivations and a history. Each character is also one with all. Jerusalem’s characters are fuelled by the Pauline notion that ‘we being many are one body in Christ and every one members one of another’ (Rom.12.5). Blake’s Eternals explain how this works: . . . contracting our infinite senses We behold multitude; or expanding we behold as one . . . (J38:17–18)

When we engage imaginatively with Jerusalem we, too, can expand and contract perception, perceiving both the differentiations (the ‘multitude’) and the unity (‘as one’) of Blake’s unusual characters. Their relationships and dramas happen internally (psychologically and spiritually) and externally (politically and ecologically). As in alchemical texts, the stage is the cosmos and the mind. Jerusalem’s characters commute between the different states of being (such as Ulro/Satan and Eden/Eternity). They are often unconfined by space and time, but they are not disembodied. I have found it helpful to use the terms ‘daemonic’ or ‘angelmorphic’ when considering these characters. (They are Blake consistently capitalizes ‘Zoas’, ‘Emanations’, and the ‘Spectre’. So I do likewise. They are singular and plural. Hagstrum (1989: 222–5) discusses Eternals as denizens of Blake’s heaven. 1 2

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more like Shakespeare’s Ariel than Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya.) Angus Fletcher uses the term ‘daemonic’ to discuss how quasi-human characters constellate around an ‘Everyman’ figure in Spenser or Dante (1964). Such daemonic characters embody behaviours, virtues, or vices—or, as Fletcher expresses it, they ‘compartmentalize function’ (Fletcher 1964: 34–48). Blake’s characters often do likewise. Constellating around Albion, Los embodies imaginative energy; Urizen embodies reason; Hand engineers what we call the militaryindustrial complex. Like Fletcher’s ‘daemons’, Blake’s Zoas and Emanations also act as intermediaries between the human and the divine. But I think they are more than what Fletcher calls ‘daemonic’; they are also what Crispin Fletcher-Louis calls ‘angelmorphic’.3 Blake’s characters, his Zoas and Emanations, do not only commute between the human and the divine, they also appear as winged beings (J2i, 13.8, 14i, 44.4, 50.19, 86.1), they coinhere with Jesus (J4.7, 5.5–10, 91.30–1, 96.3–22), and they have flesh that can be infinitely translucent (J14.17–24, 86.14–22, 98.11–40). When they enter into a state of Eden/Eternity, they participate in a life of resurrection (J97–9).4 These attributes and behaviours are what Fletcher-Lewis would call ‘angelic characteristics’ (1997: 14). Blake’s characters can be humandivine (J64:14, 91:31)—as angels can be quasi-divine in the Bible. In the Old Testament angels can be the ‘gods’ who adore the Lord (Ps.97.7) and are judged by him (Ps.82.1).5 In the New Testament, in Revelation 22.7, Jesus is angelmorphic; the voice of the angel is his voice (Farrer 1949: 73). In Blake, humanity can participate fully in angelic divinity: the human, the angelic, and the divine can coinhere. As Rowland and Kovacs observe: ‘few have understood the subtle interplay between angelic and human, natural and supernatural, as well as William Blake’ (Kovacs and Rowland 2004: 53). Blake may have derived some of his ideas about angelic and human relations from Jacob Boehme, his acknowledged prophetic progenitor.6 Boehme thinks humanity can have an angelic form; we were not meant to be merely corporeal. Like Boehme, Blake is concerned with the journey from what he calls ‘Opakeness’, or corruptible corporeality, to a state of angelical clarity, or ‘Translucence’. The human Jesus was infused with such angelical clarity in his Transfiguration (Luke 9.29) and we too can be filled with clarity and divine light. According to Boehme, in the Resurrection we shall be like angels, having recognizable bodies as did ‘Moses and Elias’ when they ‘appeared to the Disciples of Christ in their own form and shape on Mount Tabor though they had been a long time in Heaven before’ (A5.5). But Boehme is more 3

The term was coined by Jean Daniélou in 1964 (see Fletcher-Louis 1997: 10). For more about the angelmorphic and the life of resurrection, see Fletcher-Louis (1997: 89–103). Fletcher-Louis discusses the ‘weakly henotheistic’ aspects of the Bible. Various Old Testament texts (Ex.15.11; Ps.82.1, 97.7) speak of many gods, which are later referred to as God’s angelic host (Fletcher-Louis 1997: 3–5). 6 See MHH 21 and Blake’s September 1800 letter to Flaxman (K799). 4 5

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hierarchical in his thinking than Blake: in his visions, Jesus and Sophia (Christ’s feminine counterpart) remain superior to humanity, whereas in Blake, Jesus and his Bride live within us and we live in them. Blake’s non-hierarchical characters (within and around us) are part of an angelmorphic ‘Divine Family’ (J29:83, 37:1, 38:19–27). This family, unconfined by space and time, does not have conventional domestic relationships. Even fallen Albion understands: ‘In Eternity they neither marry nor are given in marriage’ (J34:15). Blake’s contemporary readers would have known that this biblical quotation continues: ‘but are as the angels in heaven’ (Matt.22.30).7 Blake’s characters, commingling in Beulah or Eden, may be enjoying what Swedenborg calls angelic ‘conjugial’ love (which will be examined in my chapter about Jesus); they can be as elemental as some alchemical figures, occasionally commingling incestuously. Maier’s Atalanta cryptically asserts that in alchemical art perfection arises from the conjunction of Mother and Son, Father and Daughter, Sister and Brother. Osiris marries his sister, as does Sol his Luna (XLI). Blake’s work abounds with such disconcerting ‘conjunctions’: Vala says Jerusalem is her sister and her daughter (J20:19); Luvah is Vala’s father, lover, and Zoa (J80:16–19); Albion is her husband. He is Jerusalem’s father and Vala’s too, for Vala is Jerusalem’s sister. In Blake’s Four Zoas, Los and Enitharmon, the twin children of Enion, marry and beget a child (FZ1:190–385; FZ5:66–72; K269–70, 307). Angelmorphic characters not only interrelate in weird erotic ways; they are also unconfined by ordinary time. Albion, for example, can be both a bearded patriarch (J33i, 41i, 46i, 96i, 99i) and a virile young man (J19i, 25i, 75i, 95i). This is like the protagonist in Blake’s ‘Mental Traveller’, where a captive boy’s shrieks turn his guardian crone into ‘a virgin bright’. He ‘binds her down for his delight’, and matures—until a Female Babe of fire springs from his hearth who drives him away when she takes a lover. He wanders, old and decrepit, until he wins a maiden in whose love he grows younger. He becomes an infant again, bound down by the crone (K424–7). Such elemental characters are not confined by mundane sexual, temporal, or spatial parameters (and that can be disconcerting to ordinary mortal readers). These uncannily fluid characters can dwell within an individual, walk London’s streets, and travel among the stars (J50:20). Blake’s angelmorphs can be creative, or as destructive as the lustful ‘Watchers’ in the Abyssinian Book of Enoch, a text for which Blake made drawings (c827/pl.1075–83). Blake’s ideas about human–angelic relations may have been influenced by his interest in this book, which he could have encountered as a teenager. Abyssinian Enoch was brought to Europe by James Bruce, an explorer, antiquary, and Freemason, who acquired the book in 1769 (Bredin 2001: 8,

7

Also Mark 12.25; Luke 20.35–6.

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111–13).8 His exciting discovery was recorded at the Society of Antiquaries in December, 1773. The Antiquarians discussed Enoch’s angelic visions and its resemblance to the Book of Revelation at another meeting in March, 1774.9 Because Basire was the official engraver to the Society of Antiquaries (Evans 1954: 129), Blake and his master probably knew of Bruce’s discovery before many theologians did. In both Jerusalem and the Book of Enoch, the human and the angelic can overlap; humans and angels have varying kinds of relations. Enoch’s fallen angels have sexual relations with ‘the daughters of men’. In Enoch, Noah was born angelic but becomes a man (Ch.106).10 In Jerusalem, however, Albion is called ‘the Angel of my Presence’ by the Divine Voice before his fall into Selfhood (J29.5–6); it is in his prelapsarian state that he enjoys erotic bliss with his Emanation. In Blake’s vision, erotic bliss can inspire the intermingling of the human, the angelic, and the divine. Blake’s work does not exactly parallel the Book of Enoch, but of course it was not his only angelological source. Blake claimed to see angels, to speak with them, and to be guided by them.11 His characters are informed, at least in part, by Blake’s visionary experiences. Less imaginative poets and critics thought Blake’s angelmorphic characters, in poetry or in painting, were indicative of some mental disorder. For example, in 1808 the influential critic Robert Hunt considered Blake insane because he assumed that ‘representing the Spirit to the eye’ was not impossible (BR256–60).12 In 1825 the journalist Crabb Robinson, writing about Blake’s probable madness, noted that the poet told him: ‘We are all coexistent with God—Members of the Divine Body’ (BR420–1). Blake’s assertion is in keeping with how his characters relate in and with Jesus, the cosmic Divine Body in Jerusalem. Unconfined by mundane space and time, they can move through different places and states; they can wander in the Holy Land and England simultaneously. This capacity for synchrolocality was particularly disturbing to Robert Southey, who thought only a madman could situate Oxford Street in Jerusalem (BR310). Blake’s work invites his readers and viewers to share in his capacity for what he calls ‘double-vision’ (K817), and though that gift might

8 Enoch was not fully translated into English until 1821, but excerpts were published in The Monthly Magazine in 1801 (Concerning the Writings and Readings of Jude: 1801). 9 Minutes of the Society of Antiquaries. Vol. 13: 1773–1774, 16 December 1773; 10 March 1774. (Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, London). Blake was then 16 years old. 10 For more on angelmorphic Noah, see Fletcher-Louis (1997: 157–8). 11 Blake discusses his relations with angels in various letters (e.g. To Hayley, 6 May 1800 (K797); To Flaxman 12 September 1800 (K799); To Butts 10 January 1802 (K811)). For an account of his childhood visions, see BR.10–11; and for his encounter with the Angel Gabriel, see BR233–4 (citing Allen Cunningham, The Cabinet Gallery of Pictures (London: 1833), I, 11–13). 12 In The Examiner, 7 August 1808.

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now be attributed to a schizo-affective disorder,13 it is a source of joy to Blake and it informs how his characters work. One of Blake’s favourite artists was Albrecht Dürer,14 and it would be very strange if Blake did not know Dürer’s ‘double-vision’ drawing, ‘The Rabbit and the Duck’. The drawing can be seen as a rabbit; it can be seen as a duck. Very occasionally, if a viewer focuses on the eye in the drawing, it is possible to see both rabbit and duck simultaneously15—as it is possible to see both Blake’s Los and his Jesus simultaneously. When Albion is capable of ‘double vision’, the two characters are not aspects of one another; they coinhere in a dynamic relationship (J96). Blake’s characters retain their identity, while containing each other or being contained. Such shifting containment (in which one character is comprised of many others; and the many coinhere as one) was called ‘henopoeia’ by the Cambridge Platonist Henry More when expanding upon the insights of his teacher, Joseph Mede.16 More’s apocalyptic tropes are as useful for reading Blake’s poetry as they are for the Book of Revelation. (Blake had access to More’s Theological Works in Hayley’s library while he was painting watercolors depicting Revelation (Munby 1971: #1668, 139).17) More uses the term ‘henopoeia’ to describe how apocalyptic characters can involve ‘the Collection of a Multitude of Individuals into the Show of One’, and how the one can unfold into the many (1708: 528–9). Henopoeia is a key to understanding Blake’s characters. Jerusalem’s characters have varying degrees of henopoetic complexity. Many characters link, not only with each other, but also with those in the sources influencing Blake’s work, such as Shakespeare, Milton, the Bible, Boehme, and the socio-political context in which Blake lived. I will now consider the antecedents and actions of Jerusalem’s angelmorphic characters.

THE CHARACTERS Jerusalem features several major characters as well as a host of important minor ones. As the first shall be last in Christ’s kingdom (Matt.19.30)—and in 13 Youngquist (1989:145–54) reads Jerusalem as Blake’s battle with mental disorders, but he does not understand that Jerusalem and Jesus counterbalance Los’s Spectre. Davies (2003: 280– 1) discusses the myth of Blake’s madness. 14 See his 1809 ‘Descriptive Catalogue’ (K562–4) and his 1810 ‘Public Address’ (K593–5). 15 Blake might have been able to do this with alarming frequency. The image may be found online: https://faculty.uml.edu/rinnis/45.301%20Ways%20of%20Knowing/duck.gif. accessed 02/ 03/2010. 16 For more on Mede and More, see Murrin (1984: 124–33, 140–1). 17 He created these paintings for Butts. See c515/pl.577; c519/pl.580; c521/pl.582.

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a curtain call—I begin with an exploration of secondary characters (the Sons and Daughters, minor Zoas and Emanations). Their values, motivations, and actions, as well as their literary, theological, and historical antecedents can help us understand the more dynamic major characters: the Spectre, Vala, Albion, and Los. This then lays the ground for more detailed consideration of Jerusalem and Jesus in subsequent chapters. Though they do not have the most lines, Jerusalem and Jesus are the brightest stars in this show.

Sons and Daughters Let us begin with Albion’s sons and daughters, a male and female chorus. When Albion falls (as happens frequently), the sons fall into war and the choir of daughters adore violence. Jerusalem’s narrative is fluid, in part because of its choral character: it can be polyphonic, antiphonal, harmonic. Paley imagines the poem sung, with choruses, arias, and duets. In the chorus of twelve sons,18 the eldest Hand and Hyle, have solo parts. We know what Hand looks like, for he is painted bearded and nude in Plate 26, horrifying Jerusalem as Boehme’s earthy Adam horrifies Sophia (TP.12). Hand is usually identified with Robert Hunt, whose devastating Examiner reviews in 1808 and 1809 damaged Blake’s reputation,19 an identification that causes disagreement about the date of the poem.20 Because Hand appears in Jerusalem’s first scenes, Aileen Ward thinks Blake could not have been creating Jerusalem in 1804, the date etched on his title page. I think Hunt and his brothers inform aspects of Hand’s character in Jerusalem’s Chapter Three,21 but I do not think they are the main inspiration for Albion’s most warlike and destructive son. Let me engage briefly with the scholarly discussion. Erdman was the first to link The Examiner’s logo, a pointing hand, with Albion’s bellicose son (1953: 60–71). Three Hunt brothers edited The Examiner and more than halfway through the poem, Jerusalem’s Hand has ‘Three strong sinewy Necks & Three awful & terrible Heads’ (J70:4), a verbal and visual (J50i) image that probably enriched Hand’s villainous character after 1808 or 1809 (remember: Jerusalem was not completed until after 1820). Mee describes how the Hunts sought to squash the enthusiasm animating Blake’s divine vision (2003: 273–7), and Hand certainly does all that he can to obliterate the poem’s enthusiastic hero, Paley describes them as ‘Freud’s Primal Father and Band of Brothers’ (1983: 212). Erdman (1953: 60–71); Paley (1983: 218–19); Bentley (2001: 313); Mee (2003: 273–5). 20 Aileen Ward (2006, 2008) and G.E. Bentley (2008) are debating the date. Bentley upholds both Blake’s etched date and George Cumberland’s observations (discussed below). 21 As we know, Jerusalem was created between 1804 and 1821. Hand may well have acquired three heads after The Examiner review. However, although informed by events in Blake’s life, Jerusalem’s characters are not simply allegorical figures. 18 19

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Los. Yet Hand does more than attack enthusiasm, he also controls a militaryindustrial complex (J9) and is conflated with Molech and Chemosh, ancient near-eastern war gods (J84:21).22 Unlike Hand, the Hunts opposed Britain’s ongoing war; Robert’s brothers, Leigh and John, were imprisoned for criticizing the Prince Regent (Murray 1998: 176–7). In contrast, Blake’s Hand is an accusing judge, whose ‘laws of punishment’ and military might threaten divine vision (J9:16). I think Hand’s character was originally inspired by the presiding magistrate at Blake’s sedition trial, Charles Lennox the Third Duke of Richmond, a stern military general noted for his ruthlessness. Soldiers and civilians feared him.23 Blake was tried for sedition in 1804 and he dates Jerusalem from that year. In 1807 his friend George Cumberland noted: ‘Blake has engraved sixty Plates of a new Prophecy!’ (BR246). Only Jerusalem has more than forty-five plates and Hand’s name appears in twenty-four of them. Robert Hunt’s reviews appeared in 1808 and 1809. For these reasons Ward (2006) thinks Cumberland must be referring to Blake’s Milton and the 1804 date on Jerusalem serves only to link the two poems. Mee does not dispute the 1804 date; he thinks the plates with Hand may have been inserted later (2003: 274), but reading the poem without those plates makes no sense at all. In 1804 the Duke of Richmond was a warrior judge with whom Blake had just contended. Therefore I conclude, with Bentley (2008: 166), that the date Blake engraved on his title page refers to when he began etching the poem. An actor playing Hand (in our visionary theatre) could draw upon what is known about Richmond to enrich his portrayal of Hand’s character—as those playing the other sons could draw upon what is known about Blake’s sedition trial. Characters from that trial appear throughout Jerusalem. He names and castigates the soldiers (Kox and Schofield) who accused him, as well as legal functionaries like Kwantok (John Quantock);24 castigating Richmond directly, however, might have been dangerous. Being tried for sedition can make a man cautious, inspiring him to be allusive, not direct. Blake’s terrible Hand is linked with Richmond, for his territories include: Selsey, precursor to Chichester (J40:48) where Richmond presided; Sussex, where Richmond had his ducal seat which included a Masonic Lodge; and Middlesex, where he had property and power (J71:11). Richmond had Masonic connections, as does Hand, who is a Deist and a Druid. In Hand’s character, Blake may be conflating Druids, Deists, and Freemasons, as Paine does in his ‘Origin of Freemasonry’.

22 Children are sacrificed to Molech in Leviticus 18.21, 20.2–4 and 2 Kings 23.10. Chemosh is the god of the Moabites in Jeremiah 48. Both appear as fallen angels in Book I of Paradise Lost. 23 Crosby (2009) describes Richmond’s character and reputation. 24 Bentley (2001: 253–61, 313). He mentions this again in his rebuttal of Ward’s theory (2008).

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Hand symbolism is supremely significant in the vocabulary and ritual of Freemasonry. The nineteenth-century Masonic Encyclopaedia describes the importance of ‘Hand’. It is ‘symbolic of the Light emanating not from the sun but from the Creator . . . to the Mason the hand is most important as the symbol of that mystical intelligence by which one Mason knows another’ (Mackey 1879: 317). The 1734 edition of Anderson’s Constitutions features hand symbolism in its description of the second duke of Richmond’s installation as Grand Master of all Masons (1734: 214). In 1730 this duke presided over ‘a Lodge upon the top of a hill near . . . Richmond’s seat at Goodwood’ (Rylands 1898: 173). The best-selling exposé of Freemasonry, Jachin and Boaz, also mentions Charles Lennox Duke of Richmond as a prominent Grand Master (1790: 26). This Grand Master’s son was Blake’s judge and his grandson became Sussex Grand Master in 1814 (Masonic Year 1964: 29). In the same way as Blake reshapes biblical imagery throughout Jerusalem, so may he also be transforming Freemasonry’s fraternal hand into his poem’s terrible Hand. Hyle, the Greek word for ‘matter’, is the primal dark material integral to alchemical transformation.25 Witke thinks Hyle refers to Hylas, the Lockean materialist in Berkeley’s Three Dialogues (1986: 73). Hyle may additionally have some reference to Hayley, Blake’s well-meaning patron,26 but like Hand, Hyle has a life of his own within the poem. Hand and Hyle are trapped in Selfhood and sensually deprived. They tyrannize through ‘Moral Virtue’, blighting Jerusalem with vengeance (J15:1), banishing her (J18:36), promulgating Albion’s patriarchal pomp and pride. In Jerusalem’s first chapter, Hand and Hyle, fuelling Albion’s jealous fear, whip Emanations through Babylon’s streets (J21). They terrorize women and children. They are two of the more prominent villains in Jerusalem (though of course they are redeemable). The oppressed Emanations, Beulah’s twelve daughters (who are also the Daughters of Albion) dwell in Tirzah and Rahab, warrior-queens who are synonymous with Vala (discussed below). After Albion’s fall, Beulah’s daughters follow furious Vala; they use oppressive patriarchal structures to promote bloodthirsty matriarchy, especially in Chapter Three (J66–9). They are oppressed and vindictive; though trapped in Satanic mills (Albion’s dehumanizing industrial processes), they can hover as a chorus of naked and dangerous beauties, chaste maenads,27 eroticizing war (J18i). ‘Blood human blood’ is their ‘life and delightful food’ (J68:33). Oppression only rarely breeds compassion (in life as well as in Jerusalem). Cambel and Gwendolen, Hand and Hyle’s female counterparts, weave webs of war (J7) and seek to control their tormenters; Gwendolen eventually turns e.g. Fludd 1659: 2. I found eighteen pre-ninteenth century ‘Hyle’ examples (in English) on the Alchemy website: http://www.levity.com/alchemy, accessed 18/10/2005. 26 D193; Paley (1983: 259–60); see also S656. 27 For a good discussion of the daughters as maenads, see Sturrock (2007). 25

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Hyle into a winding worm (J82). Heather O’Donaghue (2007: 179–83) and Jason Whittaker (1999: 133–5) compare these weaving daughters to composite Valkyrie-Norns as well as to mythic British women. Like Gwendolen, most of Beulah’s daughters (Ignoge, Gwinefred, Gwineverra, Estrild, Conwenna, Sabrina, Gonorill, Ragan, Cordella) do not refer to people in Blake’s own life; they derive their names from Milton’s History of Britain, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and Shakespeare. (Another daughter, Mehetabel, is an Edomite queen in Genesis 36.39 (S656).) Gwendolen’s character may also be influenced by a Druid prince named Gwenddoleu who ‘was the head of an eminent Druidical establishment in North Britain which admitted of human sacrifices’ in Edward Davies’ Mythology (1809: 466). Blake casts the accusers and legal functionaries from his 1804 trial as at least eight of Albion’s twelve Druid sons. Huttn is probably Hulton, an officer who was involved in lodging Schofield’s and Cock’s (Kox’s) charges. Peachey and Brereton acted with Quantock (Gwantok, Kwantok) as justices at the trial, and Bowen was a lawyer practicing in Sussex (S656).28 In addition to figures in Blake’s own life, Albion’s Druid sons also coinhere with the tribes of Israel, wreaking imperialist havoc throughout Europe and the Levant. As Blake maps Israel onto Britain, he challenges the theology of chosenness which had been cultivated in British poetry and theology from the defeat of the Armada onwards. Britain is a New Israel, a chosen nation—in Spenser’s Faerie Queen, in Brightman’s and Mede’s Revelation commentaries, in Isaac Watts’ hymns, in Handel, and in the ministries of Joanna Southcott and Richard Brothers. However, when Blake builds Jerusalem in England’s pleasant land he subverts the traditional idea of ‘chosenness’; all people, nations, and creatures are children of Jerusalem. According to Blake both Christians and Jews are sadly mistaken when assuming ‘a right Exclusively to the benefits of God’29 and should be chastised not only because they separate themselves from others, but also because they slaughter the innocent in the name of God, who is the source of compassion and creativity. Like his acquaintance Tom Paine, Blake condemns Israelite warmongering (K387–9) and the mimetic violence of his contemporary Britons. In Jerusalem Albion’s bellicose Hand is also Israel’s firstborn, Reuben. Jerusalem’s Israelite Reuben is a fallen character with constricted senses. Ironically, he is plagued by lust and so suffers in his desire for his woman (who is also land). In Chapter One he enroots himself ‘in the narrow Canaanite’, an allusion to his liaison with Bilhah, his father’s concubine (Gen.35). In Chapter Two Reuben sleeps in Bashan30 (J34) and in the ‘Cave of Adam’ (J36), lusting 28

According to Damon, Slade was also connected with Blake’s trial (D375). With Stevenson I think Coban is an anagram for Bacon. 29 See Blake’s ‘Annotations to Watson’ (K389). 30 Bashan is the Kingdom of Og in Numbers 21 and 32, and Deuteronomy 3.

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after beautiful Tirzah, a woman and a city; and that lust terrorizes the Canaanite people and land (J34 & 36). In Chapter Three he serves the hermaphroditic Selfhood, the pathological conflation of Vala and Satan, the harlot-beast. In Chapter Four Gwendolen (who seeks to control men) says she destroys Reuben (J81:10–12), who is also linked with London. His voice accompanies that city’s blind wanderings (J84:11–14), as furious daughters, trapped in dark mills, ingest him (J90:45–6). Jerusalem’s outcasts generally prey upon each other, though there are notable exceptions. Ancient Erin is one such exception, offering hope to Albion and to all the nations. Like Jerusalem, Erin is a person and a place, and her maternal strength and goodness can overcome suffering. Ireland had been annexed to Britain in 1801 (just a few years before the creation of Jerusalem),31 but the religious freedom ‘guaranteed’ by that Union was withheld until after Blake’s death. In Jerusalem Erin is like Los, keeping divine vision despite Albion’s tyrannical cruelty. In Chapter One she offers creative ‘Spaces’ in which Jerusalem need not be overshadowed by Vala (J11:10–13, 12:22). In Chapter Two Erin’s exhortations awaken Jerusalem and offer forgiveness to Albion (her oppressor), to Luvah (the French enemy), and to all the world (J48–50). She embodies the possibility of apocatastasis, proclaiming that Satan is a state from which any fallen culture or person can be delivered. At the close of Chapter Three (J74:54) Erin is typologically linked with Dinah from Genesis 34, whose lover, Shechem, and all his people were treacherously murdered by her brothers, Simeon and Levi. Dinah’s connection with Shechem threatened their ideas about cultural purity,32 or ‘Moral Law’; young Dinah, like Jerusalem (an anguished mother) and Erin (a wise crone), suffers terribly because of this. Young Dinah may be rooted to the earth by her sufferings (J74i), but ancient Erin breaks through grief, weaving life with ‘fibres of love’ on Golgonooza’s cosmic loom (J86:45ff.)—while the villainous Spectre seeks to destroy her work. Despite the various plagues of Selfhood, Erin keeps watch, sitting in Albion’s immortal tomb, possessed of heroic tenacity and love (J94). In her, the virtues of many Emanations combine.

Zoas and Emanations Not all Zoas and Emanations play major roles in Jerusalem. Many appear in more detail in earlier illuminated books and in The Four Zoas. Blake assumes readers know who they are.33 Ahania and Enion appear only briefly in Jerusalem 31 For more about Blake and Anglo-Irish conflicts (1780–1812), see Essick (2006: 204–10) and McClenahan (2002: 150–161). Also see Colley (1992: 322–3). 32 McClenahan (2002: 158–60) discusses the conflation of Dinah and Erin in terms of revolution and nationalism. 33 Alchemical writers like Maier assume that readers know about the Phoenix or the Mundane Egg.

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(J14.9–13, 29.59, 86.62–5, 87.1–2). Tharmas also has a cameo role, getting murdered in Mexico (J34:7) to rise again (J95–9). Urizen is less tyrannical in Jerusalem than in The Four Zoas or The Book of Urizen, perhaps because he has a much smaller part. Jerusalem’s ‘dragon Urizen’ remains a sovereign architect, like the Masonic Great Architect of the Universe, bending with golden compasses from his geometric heaven. Albion favours him because he embodies Reason. Urizen’s character may also be inspired by Urien, a Welsh Druid warrior-king in William Owen’s Heroic Elegies (1792: 22–42).34 As Albion’s champion, rational Urizen strives against emotional Luvah (J31:57). In Chapter Three Urizen builds a glorious global temple (J58), but for all his rationality he (and his sons) cannot resist the seductive furies of Albion’s naked daughters. The sons abandon their rule and compass and Urizen himself harnesses golden horses for war (J65). For a time, Luvah’s chaos prevails. Luvah appears repeatedly, causing much trouble to Albion (and to generations of Blake scholars) for he is marvelously henopoetic, identified with both Satan and Jesus, as well as with France, Vala, and Albion. He is both gentle and furious. Northrop Frye tries to read the poem in terms of Luvah (1947: 364–6, 380–1, 390–8), an interpretative approach underlying Dortort’s misreading (1998: 19, 76–9, 217–30). Luvah is important, but (dramatically speaking) he is not a major character. He is almost an elemental force (like Orc in some of Blake’s earlier works). An actor who cannot speak English could play Luvah, for he has no lines. He spends a lot of time sealed in a furnace, occasionally howling. He is like Albion’s ‘feeling function’,35 and when Albion banishes (i.e. represses) him, Luvah becomes a deadly shadow (J29). Luvah can be in several predicaments simultaneously: he is sealed in a furnace by his Emanation, Vala (J7); he strives with Urizen (J16:31, 31:57); he withers in a sepulchre (J21, 90). Raging in Albion’s ‘clouded heavens’ (J21:31), he fuels the erotics of violence. In Chapter Two Luvah tears forth from Albion’s loins ‘in rivers of blood over Europe’ (J47:4–5) and is called Satan ‘because he has entered that State’. In Chapter Three he is called France and mocked like Christ (J63–6). He is tried as a criminal in Paris, as England’s victorious armies were trying members of the French nation there in 1815 (Erdman 1954: 463). With an apocalyptic wine press (Rev.14.18) in Chapter Four (J80:82, 82:75) Luvah participates in the ‘One Great Satan’, the bloated Selfhood (J90). Paley observes that Luvah’s chaos (e.g. the bloody Terror of 1793) erupts when individuals and nations repress desire (1983: 173–5). Repression obstructs emanation. Trapped in Selfhood, Albion projects his repressed Zoa 34

Owen, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, was not only Blake’s patron and friend but also a devoted follower of Joanna Southcott—as will be discussed in my next chapter. 35 Psychologists describe different ways of perceiving and judging in terms of functions: thinking (like Urizen), sensing (like Tharmas), intuiting (like Los), feeling (like Luvah).

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outwards onto the ‘Enemy’36 and when he demonizes that ‘Enemy’ he too falls into the state called Satan. (Remember: Luvah is part of Albion.) Erdman observes that Luvah’s repression and trial demonstrate ‘that a certain kind of peace can strangle nations as cruelly as war’ (1954: 463). ‘War and princedom and victory!’ crucify Christ (J4:32, 76i). Both Albion and Luvah need forgiveness; both fall into the state of Satan to be delivered by Jesus, who leaves no one ‘in the gnawing grave’ (J62:21). Los (our hero) labors ‘to bring Albion again / With Luvah into light eternal’ (J75:25–6), valiantly contending with his Spectre and his Emanation Enitharmon as he does so. In Eden/Eternity, Enitharmon weaves while Los builds, as Tubal-Cain and his gentle sister Naamah weave and forge in Jacob Boehme’s Mysterium Magnum (29.43–4) and in Masonic ritual (Jachin 1790: 1). Through much of Jerusalem, Enitharmon undermines Los’s creative work; she is gripped by the Female Will, which arises from Los’s and Albion’s repression. In Chapter One, for example, Los’s slimy Spectre calls her ‘my great Sin’, and in Chapter Two Albion calls her (and Jerusalem also) a harlot daughter, though neither have multiple lovers. In mundane reality, Enitharmon is ‘the vegetated mortal wife of Los’ (J14:13) (who is often identified as Catherine Blake); but she is also angelmorphic, commuting to the Divine Family who are not confined by space-time. Chapter Two opens with a ‘messenger speech’, as Enitharmon (guarded by the Spectre37) flees from Albion’s fall. Their words inspire Los to rescue Albion, but that inspiration falters when Selfhood intrudes. By Chapter Three Enitharmon and her magic looking glass aid and abet treachery and violence (J63), as repressive chastity is spreading war throughout the world. Enitharmon’s looking glass is not like Boehme’s Mirror of Divine Wisdom (TI2.1:30–50): it reflects a pale and infantile world; a world that is not merely an image, but a violent reality (J63:21–38). In Chapter Four Los has a beautiful vision of Jerusalem, and Enitharmon is reborn from him (J86) but she has no wish to cooperate with her Zoa. Infected by the Spectre, Enitharmon seeks dominion for herself (J87:12–24). What could be a creative partnership becomes a banal bickering-match. To create partnership, the Spectre must be broken in pieces like a potter’s vessel.

Spectres, Shadows, and Vala In Jerusalem the Spectre is as polymorphous as the poem is polysemous. ‘Spectre’ usually means ‘ghost’ or ‘apparition’, but Blake’s Spectres are generally destructive dehumanizing creatures engendered by (and engendering) 36 Such as Napoleon, who was demonized in politics and popular culture while Blake was writing. 37 This is the only time in the poem when the Spectre is helpful.

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separation from life in the Divine Body. Spectres come in many forms: ‘the Spectre of Albion’, ‘the Spectre of Los’, ‘the Spectre of Urthona’, ‘the Spectres of the Dead’ (D381–3). ‘The Holy Reasoning Power’, when divorced from Imagination and compassion, is called ‘the Spectre of Man’ (J10.15–16, 36.23, 54.7). The Spectre, synonymous with Selfhood (which is Satan in J27, 33.17), is as divisive and greedy as an unfallen Emanation is connective and generous. Every character, as well as the author and reader, must contend with Spectres. Spectres cause people, places, and emotions to become ‘spectrous’, or dehumanizing. ‘Spectrous’ is an adjective peculiar to Blake and can be found throughout his Four Zoas and in Milton, as well as in Jerusalem; it is often equivalent to ‘fallen’ (as in ‘fallen man’). Throughout this book I will use this adjective as Blake does, for it links the notion of dehumanization with the character of the Spectre and the disease of Selfhood. ‘Self’ in Blake is never a positive concept. When Blake confronts his ‘Selfhood! Satan, arm’d in gold’, he prays to Jesus: ‘Subdue my Spectre to thy fear’ in the preface to Chapter Two (J27). Subduing the Spectre is part of the human condition. In Chapter Three Blake declares that we are all ‘born a Spectre or Satan’ and all require ‘a new Selfhood continually and must continually be changed’ (J52). The intriguing riddle in Plate 41 tells us how to do that. Here, a little ghostly scribe, perhaps Blake himself, presents a reversed-writing message. (Blake wrote in reverse when etching Jerusalem, but in this design Blake etches ‘normally’, tempting us to read as he does.) He reverses our eyes in this riddle: Each Man is in his Spectre’s Power Until the arrival of that Hour When his Humanity awake And casts the Spectre into the Lake38

Revelation’s lake of fire (20.15) is one of the few things that can thoroughly consume a Spectre. So can the furnaces of Los. The Spectre can be plural or singular, wreaking havoc in many ways. Los has a Spectre and Los is a Spectre, the Spectre of Urthona. Albion’s Spectre is both repressed Luvah (J60.2) and his ‘Abstract Reasoning Power’ (J10:13–15). Spectres of the dead appear and clamour; Albion’s Sons can be Spectres. A Spectre stretches over Europe (J67).39 The Druid Spectre has tyrannized ‘Little Ones’ in the Name of God for six thousand years. The Spectre is the ‘Holy Reasoning’ and ‘Abstract Objecting Power’ that negates political cooperation as well as human love (J10:14–16); it is essentially divisive. The Spectre’s abstract ‘World of Shapes’ (J54:24) separates nation 38

I italicize mirror writing. One of my Russian students (in Ekaterinburg 2002) firmly believed that Marx and Engels either knew Blake or that Blake is a prophet in the predictive sense. 39

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from nation, feeling from thought, men from women. Abstraction (the ethos of Ulro) obstructs emanation and can fill humanity and the world with destructive violence. Blake understands how spectrous fury feeds on itself; it creates a cycle of violence in which ‘the Punisher / Mingles with his Victim’s Spectre enslav’d’ (J47:14–15). Interpreters discuss Blake’s multifaceted Spectre in many ways. Frye observes that Spectres ‘encourage incessant war and a constant belief in mystery’ (1947: 379) and Erdman relates the Spectre to the military-industrial complex (1954: 331). Paley insightfully identifies Los’s Spectre with Blake’s creative and sexual struggles, suggesting that the poet Cowper’s madness informs that character (1983: 246–56). Youngquist thinks Jerusalem is a schizoid drama about the Spectre, Blake’s way of coping with his own disorders; but I think grappling with the Spectre is part of a process that is more than just psychological: it is also spiritual and theological. In Blake we are meant to be members of the Divine Body, participating in the Body of Christ. Spectres obstruct that participation. Spectres are related to Shadows—which are not always spectrous. Los’s Spectre is called a shadow (J6:5); it has a shadow (J15:7) as well as a shadowy face (J10:60). Jerusalem is both an Emanation and Albion’s lovely shadow (J85:29).40 Vala, Jerusalem’s shadow, commingles happily in Beulah—but she is monstrous in Ulro. Beulah may be a ‘lovely shadowy universe / Where no dispute can come’ (J48:18–19), but that shadowy state can be blighted. When Selfhood severs shadows from the Divine Body, their loveliness becomes spectrous. The Spectre of Los embodies the torments that Selfhood can bring. When Albion falls into Selfhood, Los’s Spectre emerges, dividing from his back. Twice we learn that he is invisible (J10:65, 86:54), but we can see and hear him. He is like an animated gargoyle. On Plate 6 he hovers like a giant vampire bat above Los at his forge,41 reappearing as a red pterodactyl above sleeping Jerusalem in Plate 37. There is nothing heroically Satanic about this banal comic villain; he is lazy, depressed, self-pitying, jealous, daunted by women, whining, and angry. Los calls him ‘my pride and my self-righteousness’ (J8:30). In Chapter One ‘the opake blackening fiend’ (the Spectre) argues that Los should abandon Albion, implying that forgiveness is entirely unreasonable (J7). He sparks Los’s sexual fears, infecting him with jealousy, threatening him with shame and divine punishment. Blighted by spectrous misogyny, Los uses his Spectre to terrorize Beulah’s daughters (J17). The Spectre gloats when Los quarrels with his feminine counterpart, Enitharmon (J88). The Spectre tries to impersonate God, ‘taking the Starry Heavens / Like ‘The darkness shall be the light . . . ’. Blake painted a black Madonna (c674/pl.963). Blake would have known of the engraving, The Vampire or Spectre of Guiana, through his friend John Gabriel Stedman (Erdman 1954: 234). 40 41

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to a curtain’ (J91.33) as in Psalm 104, and ‘forming Leviathan and Behemoth’ (J91:40) as in the Book of Job (40.15). Finally Los finds the situation intolerable. He can recognize falsehood and smites his Spectre ‘in unpitying ruin’ upon his anvil, unbinding his constricted senses and sending him forth transmogrified (J91.50).42 Los’s contentions are akin to alchemical transformations, where darkening corruption—the nigredo—prefigures albedo, a whitening or translucence, which is both physical and spiritual.43 Alchemically pulverized, altered and released, the Spectre no longer tyrannizes Los. In the same way, shadowy Vala does not seek to destroy translucent Jerusalem when she is united with her. Vala and Jerusalem are meant to be united, as body and soul are meant to coinhere. From the coinherent Emanation all life comes: Vala gives bodies; Jerusalem gives souls (J18:8). When they are united, Vala and Jerusalem are also called ‘England who is Brittannia’ (J36:28, 94:20), Albion’s mythic and political counterpart.44 But when Albion banishes his Emanation, Jerusalem and Vala separate in pain, wandering like the war-god of the Israelites (Exodus 13–14) in a pillar of cloud (J5.48–51), until Vala emerges as a separate and dangerous shadow (J12). Scholars have called Vala many things. Sloss and Wallis declare that she personifies Nature, Natural Religion, Natural Morality (1926: 246). I think Vala also resembles the French Goddess of Reason, whose enthronement in Notre Dame in 1793 accompanied the Terror.45 Reason can eclipse compassion, as Vala eclipses Jerusalem when severed from her. Northrop Frye relates Vala to Venus, to the Hebrew Ark of the Covenant, to Medusa, and to Revelation’s harlot, calling her deceptions ‘the chief thing Revelation comes to remove’ (1947: 119, 369, 140). Damon helpfully identifies Vala with the Mother Goddess of the Volüspa, also called Vala, in the Elder Eddas which Blake most probably knew (D428).46 Paley affirms this identification and also likens her to Milton’s Dalila and to the Norse Snow Queen (1983: 189–92). Whittaker identifies her with an ascetic Druid Queen of Heaven (1999: 165). Blake likens her also to Shakespeare’s Goneril and Regan who dwell within her (J5.43, 71.33–5). When the poem begins, Vala is almost as banal as Los’s

42

Paley compares this to battles between sacred and profane magicians (1983: 253–4). For examples search http://www.levity.com/alchemy, accessed 08/10/2005. Paracelsus asserts that destruction is necessary to perfection. Also see Waite (1926: I.4) and Paley (1970: 13–14). 44 As the goddess Roma was the mythic and political counterpart of Augustus. 45 The Goddess was enacted by Mlle. Maillard, an opera singer (Keane 1995: 392–3). In his (1837) French Revolution, Thomas Carlyle describes Reason’s enthronement: on the high altar, ‘in azure mantle aloft’, serenely basking in adoration as ‘mad multitudes’ danced outside the chapel, ‘the dancers nigh bare of breeches, neck and breast naked . . . whirling and spinning like those Dust-vortexes, forerunners of Tempest and Destruction’ (1933: II.313). 46 O’Donaghue (2007) writes insightfully about the dissemination of Norse mythology in the eighteenth century and its probable influence on Blake. 43

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pathetic Spectre, but like Lear’s daughters, she grows increasingly destructive as her drama progresses. Though identified with Babylon and called the Goddess Virgin Mother, blue-eyed Vala whines and pouts in Chapter One as no self-respecting goddess or Valkyrie ever would. As the Spectre wheedles Los, so Vala moans to Jerusalem, weaving a veil of tears (J19–22). Jerusalem tries to reply with kindness, even as Vala passive-aggressively engineers Albion’s disemboweling, depicted in Plate 25. In Chapter Two Vala infects the human heart with jealous fury. She seduces Albion, usurping God in his soul (J31–34). In Plate 32’s design, she tries to enmesh Jerusalem and her children in her blue veil woven with ‘iron threads of love & jealousy & despair’ (J32:49). In Chapter Three Vala merges with the Druid Spectre (J64:25), spreading a repressive religion of chastity and weaving a web of war throughout the world. Vala/ Babylon delights in ‘bowels hid in hammer’d steel rip’d quivering on the ground’ (J65:53). We learn that ‘in Time her name is Rahab’ (J70:31) and in that name Blake conflates three biblical figures: Rahab, the prostitute in the Book of Joshua (2–6) who betrayed her own people to the Israelites; Rahab, the primeval chaos dragon slain in Isaiah 51.9–11; and the eschatological dragon of Revelation 17 carrying Babylon the harlot (Rosso 2002: 291–303). Blake’s Babylon/Vala/Rahab is also called ‘the Dragon Red and Hidden Harlot’ (J75), using repressive chastity to promote ‘Religion Hid in War’ (J75, 89). Crowned with gold in Chapter Four (J78), she seems to triumph over Jerusalem, thrusting her cup of wrath upon the Bride of the Lamb (J88). But the cup of malediction cannot destroy Jerusalem. It is Vala who disappears at the end of time, taking her place in the composite Emanation, ‘England who is Brittannia’, in Plate 94. When time is finished (J94:18), Jesus rends ‘the Druid veil’ (J55.16) with which Vala tyrannizes humanity. Like the Spectre, Vala’s veil prevents us from entering the Divine Body. The veil can mean different things to different readers. Morton Paley rightly observes that ‘only an animated cartoon could do full justice to the fluidity’ of Vala’s polysemous veil. He relates her veil to that which makes things holy or taboo: the Hebrew Temple’s veil and the hymeneal membrane (1983: 194). Damon relates it to corporeal things, identifying it as our ‘body of flesh’, and as ‘the Mundane Shell’ or material world (D432). David Weir likens the veil to the Hindu notion of ‘Maya’ or delusion, explicated in William Jones’ Asiatick Researches in 1788 (2003: 66). In the late eighteenth century, Freemasons practiced a ritual called ‘Passing the Veils’, featuring four different colored veils (Hawkyard and Worts 1949: 186–93); there is no way to tell whether Blake knew of this ceremony. Vala’s veil may be an apocalyptic pun. Blake probably knew that ‘apocalypse’ in Greek can be a literal ‘unveiling’. Jerusalem, like the glories of art and science, ideally exists in naked beauty; Babylon/Vala must be stripped of her veils to participate in that beauty. Vala has at least seven veils; the first appears

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as a ‘veil of tears’ (J20:3). In the time of love it is ‘a beautiful net of gold and silver twine’, rent by Albion’s passion (J20:30). After his fall, Vala spreads ‘her scarlet veil over Albion’ (J21:50), ‘the veil of Moral Virtue Woven for Cruel Laws’ (J23:22). In Plate 32 the veil turns blue; then, in Plate 34, the moon is Vala’s ‘glimmering Veil’ (J34:7). It is composed of the spectres of the dead, vegetating and petrifying in Albion’s hands. Albion chooses to be trapped in this veil (J24); like King Lear, he foolishly favours the daughters who destroy him and banishes the one who truly loves him.

Albion’s Antecedents It is helpful to read the poem in light of Shakespeare’s King Lear as well as its biblical and theological antecedents. The nature of Jerusalem’s major characters—Albion, Jerusalem, Vala, and Los—and the dramatic relationships between them have something in common with Lear. Like Shakespeare’s tragedy, Blake’s Jerusalem features a rescue operation. It is not primarily the damsel who is in distress, but Albion, England, and every man. Fallible Los and devoted Jerusalem seek to restore him, as Shakespeare’s Cordelia and Kent labour to rescue Lear. Jerusalem culminates in a great awakening, which may be informed by Blake’s response to Lear’s great awakening in Act IV. Three times in 1804 Blake suggested that he engrave Romney’s ‘incomparable production . . . a picture of Lear and Cordelia, when he awakes and knows her’ (K845).47 When Lear awakens he wants to self-annihilate. He says to Cordelia: If you have poison for me, I will drink it . . . You have some cause . . .

And Cordelia replies: ‘No cause, no cause’ (IV.7.72–5). Forgiveness eradicates causality. In Blake’s lifetime, London Lear productions featured an ‘improved’ ending, amended by Nahum Tate, in which Cordelia marries Edgar and Lear is restored. In Tate’s version, apocalyptic destruction leads to happy restoration.48 Many scholars have noted how Lear influenced Blake’s poetry and painting throughout his life. As a young man, Blake painted scenes from Lear and may have used a rendering of Lear and Cordelia as a teaching tool when giving art lessons (Lehrer 1976: 80–1). Lear’s language and imagery color his juvenile ‘Mad Song’ (Phillips 1973: 8–11). Cordelia’s resistance to quantifying love may have inspired ‘A Little Boy Lost’ in Songs of Experience (Adlard 1972: 45). Leslie Tannenbaum observes that Lear’s and Cordelia’s imprisonment may be the source of the visual design in Europe’s eighth Plate (1982: 53).49 Lear’s 47 48 49

See also K845, K848–9. Lascelles (1973) and Wittreich (1984) discuss how Revelation informs King Lear. In some Europe editions, Plate 8 is Plate 7.

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character may have inspired Blake’s Tiriel in 1789 (Beer 1969: 64), Urizen around 1794,50 and, finally, Albion. Paley discusses how Lear’s rage colors Albion’s fury in Jerusalem (1983: 221–2); Albion calls Jerusalem ‘Cordella’ when castigating her (J21:18–21). Considering Albion in the light of Shakespeare’s fallen king helps to illuminate his character. As Lear disowns Cordelia because she cannot quantify love, so Albion casts out Jerusalem because she does not conform to demonstrative truth. As Lear is committed to ‘the professed bosoms’ of his lying daughters, so Albion embosoms wily Vala (J33:20–34:30). Wicked Edmund in Lear worships ‘the Goddess Nature’, seeking to kill his own brother and father, as Albion’s children, worshipping ‘the Goddess Nature’, seek to destroy him and each other. Apocalyptic storms beat around Albion. Loyal Kent and loving Cordelia work to rescue storm-torn Lear, engineering a war of love so that he may be restored. (Like Kent, Los is rather rough; he can roar forth in eloquent insult or beat out his Spectre on an anvil.) Jerusalem has no army, but, like Cordelia, she persists in the dangerous work of forgiveness, restoring her father to life. Like Lear, only when stripped to nothing can Albion perceive love. Of course, Blake’s Albion is more angelmorphic than Shakespeare’s king; his character is also influenced by Blake’s response to other mythopoetic texts. Albion is a cosmic man and a cosmic land. Frye likens him to the Kabbalistic Adam Kadmon who contains all things in his limbs (1947: 220–1), a tradition to which Blake may allude in his preface ‘To the Jews’ (J27). Albion’s expanding (and contracting) body is certainly influenced by Boehme’s and Swedenborg’s ideas about cosmic humanity. In Swedenborg God and the cosmos is man: the circulatory system is Love; the respiratory system is Wisdom—but God does not exist in physical space (DLW #12, #21, #381).51 In Boehme, divine energies play both within the human microcosm and out in the infinite universe. Like Boehme’s Adam, Blake’s Albion can hold both male and female, but lust and a will to power sever him from the feminine-divine. Albion is a primeval giant in Milton’s History of Britain, in Spenser, and in Holinshed’s Chronicles.52 He is a son of Neptune, founding a nation as Poseidon founds Atlantis in Plato’s Critias (Frye 1947: 126). Frye also compares him to Ymir, the sleeping giant in the apocalyptic Elder Edda, from whose form the earth, mountains, heavens, and seas emerge (1947: 125). Elizabeth Stieg identifies Albion with Job, when considering Jerusalem as biblical reinterpretation (1985: 254–63). Yet Albion sleeps through most of his breakdown. Unlike Job, he wilfully creates his own suffering.

50 51 52

Beer (1969: 86); Erdman (1954: 371–3). Analogously, cyberspace holds infinite possibility. Whittaker (1999: 20–1); Frye (1947: 126).

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Albion’s warmongering, arising from jealous fear, cripples him and his land. In Chapter One he seeks princedom and victory, rejecting Jerusalem and the Saviour’s song (J4). When he rends Vala’s veil, it poisons him with the terrors of morality and shame (J23). Albion remembers the time of love as his sons curse Jerusalem and all her children, and his daughters disembowel the cosmic man (J25i). In Chapter Two Albion’s spiritual sickness spreads: he erects Druid altars (J28), worships his shadow, seeks to kill Luvah (J29), and despises Los’s rescue attempts. His sons carry him to Druid temples, where he worships Reason and adores shadowy Vala (J32–3). He wants to devour Emanations (J42) and resists the loving help of Eternal Cathedral Cities (J44–6). To heal him, the forgiving Saviour prepares a couch of repose from which dead Albion may awaken (J48). In Chapter Three Albion falls from Eternity, fleeing from Divine Vision (J54). A flaming plough rolls over him, yet he rises in Selfhood ‘in the Satanic Void’ (J57–8). War covers the earth, raging in Albion’s bosom (J64–9). As Albion sleeps in Chapter Four, his spectrous sons seek to devour him (J78). He seems very dead until Plate 94, when time ends and the Divine Breath breathes, inspiring a great awakening. Awakening, Albion sees how Jesus is Los and Los is Jesus. He sees his Selfhood, realizes the ruin he has wrought, and jumps into Los’s furnaces which become living water. All human forms expand in beautiful paradises as Albion embraces his Emanation in flames, becoming human-divine in the bosom of God, the Name of Jerusalem (J96–9). Everything is forgiven. Jerusalem’s love and Los’s labour transform the cosmic man and land.

Our Hero, Los—and the Narrator Los is our hero, but he is a fallible hero (like the maker of the poem). Though he makes mistakes, the Sons of Eden praise him in songs ‘because he kept the divine vision in time of trouble’ (J30:15, 95:20). Los wants his creativity to overcome the destruction of war; and he is willing to suffer as he works in frenzy in the ‘furnaces of affliction’. In pain he wields his hammer, a creative weapon ‘that is eternal forgiveness’ (J88:50), but fear and fury can corrupt what he builds (J75). He finally transforms his rage on the cosmic anvil, beating his Spectre into recyclable pieces (J91). Like an alchemical architect he builds Golgonooza’s53 transformational space, working in the face of internal and external chaos. He resembles not only Shakespeare’s Kent, but also Hephaistos, Thor, Ezekiel’s Watchman, Elijah, John on Patmos, Tubal-

53

Golgonooza is discussed in detail in Chapter 5.

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Cain, and John Donne’s version of the divine blacksmith, battering the human heart so that Albion can finally be transformed by divine love.54 Los’s work subverts several mytho-prophetic paradigms. For example, the spectrous sons seek Albion’s destruction as the Titans did Chronos (as in Hesiod’s Theogony),55 but Los labors to redeem (not to destroy) the devouring Father. Unlike jealous Hephaistos, whose artifice traps Venus in a net, Los’s work unveils Emanations, freeing them from shame. Unlike Freemasonry’s Tubal-Cain, Los forges not to uphold, but to shatter a sacred mystery (J91). His fires offer all who thirst a place in the embrace of Jerusalem (J96). Like Blake, Los tries to keep his divine vision when isolated and internally troubled. As Los is with and in Jesus and Albion (in the Divine Body), so is he also with and in the first-person narrator who explicitly addresses us in the preface to each chapter as well as occasionally within the action of the poem. The first-person narrator (Blake) claims direct inspiration from God. A selfproclaimed prophet, he sees and hears his vision. Like Los, Blake the Narrator walks ‘up and down in Six Thousand Years’ (J74), traversing contemporary London, Babylon, ancient Egypt, Druid Britain. Like John on Patmos, whose Revelation pours from an open heaven, Blake’s vision appears in the sky, where he sees the Saviour in the rising sun ‘Spreading his beams of love and dictating’ (J4:3–4). As in Daniel, Blake’s vision calls to him in sleep and in wakefulness. Like Ezekiel, Blake flashes back to starry wheels and fourfold Zoas over a period of twenty-five years. The vision began ‘in Lambeth’s shades’ in the 1790s and continued in Felpham where he lived until 1804, when he returned to London and created Jerusalem.56 Blake declares: ‘I write in South Molton Street what I both see and hear’ (J38:41–2). When taking divine dictation, Blake is unconfined by mundane space-time. He consciously writes, as Boehme does, to open his readers to a world beyond reason. Blake invites us to participate in vision. To read Jerusalem we must enter it, using our imaginations to insert obliterated words, to read in reverse, to identify morphing characters. Word gaps are especially apparent in Chapter One (J3, 7). It took more than a century for scholars like Swinburne, Damon, Keynes, and Erdman to discern Plate 3’s missing ‘love’, ‘friendship’, ‘blessed’, and ‘forgive’ (P10–11). Perhaps the text asks that readers not only find, but also embody such words. In Chapter Two a diminutive Blake mirror-writes the message we must decipher (J41i) and his little hand might also be morphing from a mutant divine chariot with serpent-wheels (J46i). Blake may be writing from within a mirror-world, 54 Paley (1983: 234–43) discusses Los as Prophet, Evangelist, bard, and Hephaistos, and his relation to Blake. Blake may have engraved Stothard’s portrait of Donne in 1779 (BR.813). Donne casts God as a blacksmith in the first quatrain of his Holy Sonnet XIV. 55 Blake engraved ‘Gods fighting Titans’ for Flaxman’s Hesiod between 1814 and 1816 (BR772–3). 56 For a comprehensive record of Blake’s residences, see BR733–56.

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like that inhabited by Boehme’s Holy Wisdom. Boehme’s divine mirror, like the sculpture in Los’s halls (J16), holds everything that can and will happen. In that mirror, past, present, and future exist simultaneously (FQ9.78; TI 10.19). In Chapter Three Jerusalem’s first-person prophet talks with a Grey Monk (J52), as the young Blake sketching in Westminster Abbey allegedly encountered in vision ‘a great procession of monks and priests’ (BR13).57 Like John conversing with angels (Rev.10.9, 17.7), Blake the Narrator asks ‘a Watcher and a Holy-One’ about ‘the wheel of fire’ destroying creation, and learns that this is the ‘wheel of religion’ obstructing the Tree of Life (J77). Like Los, the Narrator must contend with this wheel and the ‘vast Serpents’ of reasoning (J15), but he has language, the poetic Word through which he can forge a spiritual sword that circumcises hearts and thus opens inward eyes.58 Both Blake and Los do Christ’s apocalyptic work. Keeping divine vision means being in and with Jesus. Paley notes that Old Testament wrath and Christ-like love meld in Los’s character (1983: 236). Apocatastasis may require falling into fire. When Blake prays to the Saviour: ‘Annihilate the Selfhood in me’, he asks to be pulverised (J5). He struggles as Los does. Let us look at Los again. Throughout the poem he copes with many conflicts. He struggles with his Spectre, with Albion, with Enitharmon, and with Albion’s spectrous sons and Vala’s dangerous daughters. He builds while battling (J6–11). Though the deadly empiricism of ‘Bacon & Newton & Locke’ enshrouds the life of the mind throughout Europe, Los by contrast tries to build imaginatively (but he does not always succeed). He has many adventures—and mishaps. When mapping Israel onto Britain he tries to create synchrolocality instead of separateness (J15–16), but this helps to foster ‘Religion Hid in War’. While desperately trying to control his Spectre and his fears, he loses the Emanation he loves (J17). His fire globe holds wrath and love as he enters Albion’s darkening interior (J31), confronts his ruined furnaces, and constricts ravening Reuben (J34, 36). Battling fury and despair (J37), he proclaims forgiveness, rousing Eternals as Albion attacks his furnaces (J42). The Eternals call Los Elijah (J44), but this Elijah’s work finally redeems Albion’s Jezebel. Yet when the roots of Albion’s Mystery Tree enter his soul (J53), Los rages against the Female Will (J56), neglecting the ‘Little Ones’ he wants to protect. His rage may be unintentionally transformative, for he uses Vala’s deadly veil to build the redemptive Mundane Shell, a space where forgiveness can happen (J59). In his furnaces he sees Jerusalem, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph (J62). As the Spectres of the Dead howl around him (J73), Los forges twenty-seven heavens (J75) and in those heavens ‘Religion

57 Quoting Oswald Crawfurd, ‘William Blake: Artist, Poet, and Mystic’, New Quarterly Magazine 1, 1874. 58 See J55:66, 98:18; allusions to Rom.2.29; Deut.10.16, 30.6.

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hid in War’ reigns (J75). Los works unsuccessfully for 6,000 years. Were he less imperfect, his tenacity would be less heroic. As he compels his Spectre to work in Chapter One, so he compels Vala’s daughters in Chapter Four, drawing them into his furnaces (J82). He sees Jerusalem in the naked beauty of holiness (J86), and Enitharmon is born again from him (J87). Her independence enrages Los, but he keeps on forging (J88), until he finally shatters his Selfhood (J91). Then Los understands that ‘sexes must vanish and cease to be’; gender roles can constrict the human form (J92). Freed from constriction and fear, he enters the Divine Body (J93). Albion sees that Los is one with Jesus (J96). Jerusalem awakens to ‘overspread all nations as in ancient time’ (J97:2). She is the heroine of Blake’s poem and is as undervalued by many critics as she is by Albion.59 Articles, essays, and book chapters explore the characters of Los, Albion, Luvah, and the Spectre. Shadowy Vala receives more scholarly attention than luminous Jerusalem. Yet every living thing emanates Jerusalem in the poem’s climax. She is the source and the end of being. When she is banished, human divinity is not possible.

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e.g. Mellor (1982/83, 1993: 22–3); Webster (1983); Kaplan (1996/97); Dortort (1998); Persyn (1999); Connolly (2002). These have been discussed or will be.

3 Jerusalem: Her Character and Context This chapter considers how Jerusalem’s character is shaped, her mythopoetic antecedents, the context in which she was created—and how she moves through the poem.1 Simultaneously angelmorphic and mundane, Jerusalem’s character is shaped by a pastiche of poetic and theological imagery. Examining that imagery—in the Bible, in Boehme’s writings, and in the popular culture of Blake’s London—enriches our understanding of Jerusalem, her theological significance, and the world in which Blake worked. Blake’s heroine can be likened to Jesus: she takes on the sin of the world, rises from annihilation, and is a great transformer, subverting social and theological paradigms. She is condemned as a harlot because of the inclusive love she offers. Through Jerusalem Blake challenges: (1) the biblical perception of harlotry; (2) the veneration of virginity exemplified by Boehme; (3) and the righteousness preached by Joanna Southcott, whose embodiment as the Woman Clothed with the Sun inspired thousands of Londoners from 1802 to 1814.2 Jerusalem’s story of forgiveness and dynamic restoration is like ‘a golden string’ (J77) leading us into the heart of the labyrinth of Blake’s illuminated epic.

LIKE CHRIST Blake’s heroine is his Christ’s feminine counterpart, a Wisdom figure, ‘the Bride of the Lamb’ (J20, 27, 46, 72, 79). Akin to the beautiful Wisdom loved by Solomon, ‘a pure emanation of the glory of the almighty’, she brings peace and prosperity to the nations (Wis.6–8; J24, 79). Like Solomon’s beloved (Wis.10–11), Blake’s Jerusalem travels throughout history and the world (J24, 79). When she and Jesus embrace, their ‘holy raptures’ can inspire all to participate in the Divine Body (J79:39–45). Jerusalem is the Divine Name through which all enter that body 1

Her role as a city is more fully explored in Chapter 5. In 1804, when Blake returned from his trial in Sussex to live again in London, Southcott had over 8,000 followers (Brown 2002: 136). 2

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(J99:5). She and Jesus are how all are in God, to paraphrase 1 Corinthians 8.6 where Paul uses the language attributed to Wisdom to describe Jesus (Dunn 1998: 269–71). Christ and Wisdom interpenetrate, as Jesus and Jerusalem can do in Blake’s poem. Like Jesus, Blake’s heroine is both human and exalted, vulnerable and invincible; she suffers with those who suffer. Jesus is crucified; Jerusalem is eaten by a great dragon (J89). In Jerusalem’s final scene, the Emanation takes on the sin of humanity, awakening Albion to self-annihilation (J94–5). Through most of the poem, she is despised and rejected, like Isaiah’s suffering servant. Like Jesus in Philippians 2.5–8 she loses her divine form (J2i, 14i) and is humbled, becoming a slave (J59–62). Albion, his sons, and Vala all vilify her. They cast her out as a harlot. In fact, Jerusalem only has ‘cominglings from the head even to the feet’ (J69.43) with Jesus, but in Blake’s inclusive theology all nations and people are part of the Body of Christ. When Jerusalem loves Jesus she loves all humanity. This outrages Albion. He wants to control the feminine and negate the divine, to rule the world and impose Vala’s veil of Moral Law upon all nations. A Jerusalem who loves the whole ‘Humanity Divine’ in ‘virgin loveliness’ threatens patriarchal pride. She, the Bride of the Lamb, is condemned as a harlot because of the forgiveness and peace she offers to all (J18).

THE HARLOT, THE BRIDE In Jerusalem Blake redefines the biblical notion of harlotry. Blake calls Jerusalem, his heroine, the Bride of the Lamb. But fallen characters (Albion and his warlike sons; Vala and her furious daughters) consider her a harlot because of the liberating forgiveness and love that emanate from her. By contrast, Vala (Jerusalem’s shadow) is a chaste virgin, offering love and freedom to no one. Blake (who is more reliable than Albion’s fallen sons) calls her a harlot, not because she fornicates, but because she propagates war. Propagating war makes Vala a whore. Unlike Jerusalem, she does not behave like a biblical harlot. In the Bible harlots are erotically active women who are not under the protection of a husband, son, father, or brother (Bird 1989: 119–39)—or they are women who violate such protection by fornicating. Unmarried harlots may be making a living (like Rahab in Joshua 2–6); married ones indulge in adultery (like the temptress with the perfumed bed in Proverbs 7). Harlots are generally condemned, though very occasionally a virtuous fornicator (like Rahab or Tamar) receives praise. Harlotry and fornication can also refer to indulging in trade and military treaties with foreigners, for such relations can contaminate the cultural purity of Israel. Hosea, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah call the city of Jerusalem a harlot because of her foreign affairs; the god of

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Israel is a jealous god. Blake’s fallen characters (Albion, his sons, shadowy Vala, her daughters) are also filled with jealousy; and they call Blake’s Jerusalem a harlot because of the liberty and prosperity she can bring to all people. Blake’s Jerusalem is not under the protection of a husband, son, or father. She is called ‘Liberty’ (J26i, 54:5) and cannot be controlled by Albion or by any of his sons. She tells Albion she cannot be his wife (J31:44–5), but that is not because she ‘belongs’ to Jesus, her bridegroom. She loves him freely and is ‘rap’d sublime’ in orgasmic bliss when making love to him on their golden couch in Spain (J79:40–4). That bliss is at the heart of her liberating love. She wants to liberate Albion and his children, to free them from ‘the iron threads of love & jealousy’ (J31:49). Through his heroine, Blake challenges divine jealousy, the jealousy that destroys Jerusalem in Hosea, Jeremiah, and (especially) in Ezekiel. In Hosea (the prophetic book in which the metaphor of Israel’s marriage to God first appears),3 God destroys innocent children and the innocent earth because Jerusalem has embraced her Canaanite neighbours. But he is merciful and, magnanimously, he forgives her. In the Lamentations of Jeremiah, however, God does not forgive Jerusalem who ‘has grievously sinned’ (Lam.1.8). God utterly rejects Israel (Lam.5.22) because Jerusalem welcomed ‘the heathen into her sanctuary’ and outsiders into her congregation. Blake’s Jerusalem is similarly inclusive; all people and nations can participate in the Divine Body and when Jerusalem embraces her bridegroom no one is excluded from her love. Such inclusivity infuriates Albion, who destroys innocent children and the innocent earth (J4–5); he is animated by a jealousy that is not unlike the biblical God’s. Ezekiel’s God is especially jealous;4 the prophet sees that God’s glory is enthroned ‘in the seat of the image of jealousy’ (Ezek.8.3). This jealous God smites Jerusalem because she has ‘played the whore with the Assyrians’ and he shall punish her by exhibiting her shame to all her lovers, ‘that they may see all thy nakedness’ (Ezek.16.37). In contrast, in Blake’s Eden/Eternity nakedness is a source of joy (not shame); in fourfold vision the Emanation rises in naked beauty to embrace Albion and Jesus (J93i, 96i, 99i). In Blake, insular nationalism (J4) and chastity regulations (J63:25) create the barriers (the veils) that obstruct the embrace of the human and the divine. Jealousy (both political and psychological) destroys Jerusalem’s relations with other Emanations (such as Vala and her daughters) as well as other nations and cities.

3 Human–divine marriage is celebrated in Sumerian epics and hymns but these had not been unearthed in William Blake’s time. 4 Ezekiel’s influence upon Blake is often noted, particularly by Bloom (1963, 1971), David Herrstrom (1981), and Rowland (2005, 2007). Also see Frye (1947: 359–61, 368); Erdman (1954: 177, 201); Paley (1983: 140–1, 267); Fuller (1988: 181–2); Whitmarsh-Knight (2007: 85–6).

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Prefiguring Blake, Ezekiel’s Jerusalem is conjoined with other fallen cities. Samaria is her elder sister and Sodom is her younger. They are henopoetically part of one whole, containing fallen daughters (Ezek.16.44–5). As in Blake, Ezekiel’s women are cities and cities are women, and they can have a variety of names. In Ezekiel 23 the infidelities of Jerusalem and Samaria are embodied in the sisters, Aholah and Aholibah who delight in whoredom (i.e. trade, diplomacy, and erotic delights) with Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians. Ezekiel pruriently describes how Israelite harlot daughters dote ‘upon their paramours whose flesh is as the flesh of asses and whose issue is like the issue of horses’ (Ezek.23.20). Like Jerusalem, they enjoy making love. Of course, Blake’s heroine never even flirts with anyone other than Jesus, but when she freely embraces him she embraces all people and nations. Because of this inclusivity Blake’s fallen characters try to destroy her. Ezekiel’s jealous God destroys Aholah and Aholibah, not only because they indulge in excessive free love, but also because they admire Babylonian art (Ezek.23.14). Blake dedicated his life to making the kind of images Ezekiel’s jealous God condemns. Ezekiel’s God would have smitten Blake for his notion (in his ‘Descriptive Catalogue’) that ‘Grecian, Hindoo, and Egyptian [art], are the extent of the human mind. . . . the gift of God, the Holy Ghost’ (K579). Like Ezekiel’s fallen sisters, Blake’s Jerusalem delights in multicultural gifts (J79). When war ravishes the earth these ‘arts of life’ are ruined, as is the multicultural intercourse that brings joy to the world. Unlike Blake’s Jerusalem, Ezekiel’s fallen women-cities do not bring joy to the world, for they do not ‘strengthen the hand of the poor and the needy’ (Ezek.16.49). Blake’s heroine cares for ‘the little ones’ (those who are not powerful), bringing songs, beauty, and prosperity to people of every culture: from China and Japan to Peru and Ethiopia (J24, 79). People and nations from throughout the earth come to her, as in Isaiah’s vision of ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ when peace flows like a river and all the nations of the earth rejoice in Jerusalem, sucking her breasts in prosperity and joy (Isa.66.10–18). Blake’s Jerusalem is like the New Jerusalem in Revelation who appears as the Spirit and the Bride inviting all who are thirsty to come and drink of the water of life (Rev.22). She is also like the harlot called Babylon, whose fornications bring forth the fruits of ‘living deliciously’ with gems, costly fabrics, marvellous wood, perfumes5—for she directs and promotes international commerce. Of course Jerusalem’s global enterprise does not destroy the earth or oppress the weak. It brings spiritual and material wealth to all people in Eden/Eternity, or ‘the time of love’ (J20:41, 24, 79). In that time the harlot and the bride are part of one whole. Vala/Babylon and Jerusalem are in a mutually beneficial relationship, co-creating individual bodies and souls (J18:7) as well as a worldwide network 5 Barbara Rossing (1999: 69–71) discusses how John’s New Jerusalem is ‘the antithesis of toxic Babylon/Rome’s imperialism, violence, unfettered commerce’.

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of economic justice and beauty (J24:31–50). Though Blake’s Vala/Babylon embraces the seven-headed dragon (J75i), devouring Jerusalem in Ulro (J89), she is not damned in Eden/Eternity. With Jerusalem she partakes of the embrace of Jesus (J20:26–41). No one is condemned; in Jerusalem what looks like Revelation’s lake of fire (Rev.20.15) becomes ‘Fountains of Living Water Flowing from the Humanity Divine’ (J96:37).

THE WOMAN CLOTHED WITH THE SUN In creating his heroine, Blake draws especially on the cosmic women in John’s Apocalypse. His Jerusalem is influenced not only by John’s harlot and bride; she is especially akin to his Woman Clothed with the Sun. (I shall shortly discuss how Blake’s view of this figure is also informed by how she appears in the writings of Jacob Boehme and the popular London ministry of Joanna Southcott.) Like the Woman in Revelation 12, Blake’s Jerusalem faces a great dragon. She is also a refugee mother, severed from her children, wandering in a wilderness. As John’s Sun-Woman is helped by Mother Earth personified (Boxall 2006: 184), so Blake’s Jerusalem is helped by the wise crone Erin who manipulates space and time to save Jerusalem from corruption (J49–50). Like John’s Sun-Woman, Blake’s Jerusalem can soar with wings. In them we see the sun, moon, and stars (J2i). In other designs (J26i, 37i, 92i), she resembles Blake’s renditions of Revelation’s Woman (as well as his depictions of other biblical women). Blake very rarely labels the figures in his prophetic illuminations, and his readers interpret what they see in many different ways.6 In two plates, however, Blake explicitly labels his heroine ‘Jerusalem’ (J26i, 92i). This figure’s dress, face, hair, and proportions are strikingly similar to those of the ‘Woman Clothed with the Sun’ in watercolors Blake painted for his patron Thomas Butts between 1803 and 1805 (c519/pl.580, c520/pl.581). In Blake’s art, Jerusalem and the Sun-Woman resemble a variety of biblical women; that referential richness is integral to Jerusalem’s henopoetic character. Golden-clad Jerusalem (J26i, 92i) looks like Blake’s ‘Virgin Hushing the Young John the Baptist’ (c406/pl.491), as well as his depictions of the Virgin mystically giving birth in a tempera (painted in 1799) (c401/pl.502) and in an illustration for Milton’s ‘Nativity’ ode (painted in 1815) (c542/pl.666). When Jerusalem is painted naked in Plate 32 or 96, she resembles Blake’s Eve (c379/ Scholars disagree about the identity of the Emanation perched upon a floating flower in Plate 53, about the gender of the figures in the lily in Plate 28 as well as the naked human form in Plate 99, the nature of the crucifixion in Plate 76, the bird-man in Plate 78. I discuss these debates in Part II. 6

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pl.402) as well as his Bathsheba (c390/pl.498).7 Like many women, Jerusalem can be simultaneously mother, daughter, wife, and bride. She calls herself Christ’s Magdalene when she beholds his ‘spiritual risen body’ (J62:14). Naked Jerusalem also resembles the Woman crowned with stars and with the moon beneath her feet in Blake’s 1808 ‘Last Judgment’ (c642/pl.870, 299). Blake tells us that this figure ‘represents the Christian Church’ (VLJ, K433).8 From his reading of Boehme’s esoteric writings and his exposure to the ministry of Southcott (discussed below), Blake could see that the archetypal Woman Clothed with the Sun coinheres with many characters and places, both mundane and divine. Boehme likens John’s Woman not only to his Celestial Virgin Sophia (TL5, MM23), but also to Christ (TP13, TI13), to cosmic creation (TP8, SR11), Holy Wisdom, the Virgin Mary (SR11), Sarah (TL15), Naamah (MM23), Eve (MM23), the Christian Church (SR11)—as well as to himself and his readers (TI13). Southcott embodied a similar constellation of archetypes in her London ministry, exhorting all to be brides of Christ, obediently following her, the Woman Clothed with the Sun, the Bride of the Lamb, a Second Eve, another Mary, a Sarah. Thus Blake’s Jerusalem is like Southcott’s Woman and Boehme’s, though Jerusalem’s forgiveness challenges the exaltation of righteousness central to Southcott’s ministry—and her erotic freedom undermines Boehme’s adoration of virginity.

Boehme’s Sophia, Blake’s Jerusalem Many scholars liken Blake’s Jerusalem to Boehme’s Virgin Sophia,9 but they do not explore how they differ, an omission which hampers our understanding of Blake’s heroine. For instance, Brian Aubrey asserts that Blake’s Jerusalem reflects Boehme’s ‘concept of Sophia as a mirror, innocently reflecting back to the threefold world the innate structures of its being’ (1986: 140–1).10 He thinks both Jerusalem and Virgin Sophia are silent, passive, generating nothing. But in Blake’s poem Jerusalem suffers with those who suffer, works with her hands, directs international trade, opposes Albion, has cosmic orgasms, and protests articulately. She is not an untouchable virgin. Jerusalem’s predicament and

7 Christopher Heppner thoughtfully observes that the Jerusalem illuminations and the Bathsheba tempera depict their heroines with children whose happiness is about to be destroyed (2002/03: 84–5). 8 Fuller suggests that Blake imagines ‘an ideal form of the church’ and discusses individuals Blake could admire who worked within the church, such as Richard Warner of Bath (1988: 198–9). 9 Damon’s Dictionary standardizes this identification (D41). Fischer (2004: 77) calls Jerusalem Blake’s ‘own Sophia’. 10 He cites Raine and Ostriker, expanding upon their ideas.

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character often differ from Celestial Sophia’s—though there are striking similarities as well. Like Blake’s Jerusalem, Boehme’s Sophia is related to a vast array of feminine-divine figures. She is a celestial virgin, a Lily of Light, the keeper of a pearl of purity; but unlike Jerusalem, Boehme’s goddess is not sexually active and does not work on the earth. For example, in his Three Principles of Divine Essence (1618) Boehme’s Woman ‘stands upon the earthly Moon’ like the SunWoman in Revelation, ‘and despises that which is earthly’ (TP25.11–12). Blake’s heroine does not despise the earthly, though she seeks to be freed from the vegetative state of Generation. Her song includes every tree, worm, and human being (J98–9). Additionally, Boehme’s woman is like Naamah, Tubal-Cain’s sister, whose ‘one Word of understanding’ shall be manifest to all nations (MM29.68).11 In Blake’s poem every earthly thing reveals this word of understanding, the Name of Jerusalem, when entering into the life of the Divine Body (J98–9). (The Name is a being, a way of being, and a place.) In Blake, erotic desire and consummation lead all to be human-divine, singing in Jerusalem’s name (J20:33–41; 98–9), but in Boehme it is desire that severs humanity from Divine Wisdom, Celestial Sophia. Boehme’s Three Principles presents the story of Sophia’s flight from the flesh (TP12). Prelapsarian Adam contains both male and female humanity, but Adam’s ‘earthy worm’ seeks to devour Sophia, his celestial counterpart. Sophia rests in his arms and the man longs ‘to copulate’ (TP12.40). Sophia says he may dwell in her ‘court’, but he must not covet her precious virginity pearl. Gripped by lust, Boehme’s Adam first pleads and then violently declares: ‘I will keep thee!’. Sophia tries to reason with him. He starts to overpower her, crying: ‘I will use thee according to my will . . . my Worm is eternal; I will rule with that!’ (TP12.46). Virgin Sophia flees from Adam’s ‘earthy worm’ to ‘the Heart of God’—where she dwells, eternally protected. God promises that the serpent or worm shall be destroyed (TP12.47). In contrast, Blake’s Jerusalem enjoys erotic bliss in what she calls ‘the time of love’ (or Eden/Eternity), a time in which sensual bliss connects the human and the divine.12 Jerusalem has no desire to flee from earthy worms; in Eden/ Eternity she flies joyfully into the arms of Jesus. In fallen Ulro and Generation however, Albion (who is humanity) is infected with sexual shame. In Blake it is sexual shame and fear that severs the human from the divine. In his fallen state 11

368).

This ‘Jerusalem word’ is said to be at the heart of some Masonic mysteries (Mackey 1879:

12 Blake’s ideas about divine erotic bliss may derive from his reading of Swedenborg’s Conjugial Love. All Christians in heaven participate in a spiritually sexual love. All become angels, wedded in erotic spiritual bodies to appropriate spouses. Marriage far surpasses a state of celibacy in Swedenborg (CL #157), for ‘Love truly Conjugial’ is the finest form of chastity (CL #143). For more about Blake’s complex relationship with Swedenborg’s church and teachings, see: Bellin and Rhul (1985), Deck (1985), Paley (1985), Rix (2007: 98–103).

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Albion worships the cold and ruthless Virgin Vala who is like Boehme’s shadowy female, the Dark Mother (TI iii.8:77–9). But unlike Boehme’s ‘Light Lily’ of Wisdom, Blake’s Jerusalem does not continually strive with her shadowy counterpart. Jerusalem longs for ‘the time of love’ when she and Vala together were ‘the Lily of Havilah’, singing and dividing into many female forms (J19.40–5). Jerusalem is not afraid of her sexuality; her Pearls are not hidden in her Lily. Her spiritual and material treasures cover all the earth. Jerusalem’s raptures can bring political as well as personal joy; her beauty can inspire the nations of the earth (J79:40–4). Erotic bliss has socio-economic consequences. Embracing Jesus, she is a multinational spiritual corporation, travelling from the Thames to Spain to Poland to Turkey, Libya, France, Ethiopia, Peru, and America, teaching ‘the ships of the sea’ to sing (J79), bringing ‘blessings of gold and pearl and diamond’ to the children of all nations (J24). When Jerusalem emanates, the poor are not compelled to ‘live upon a crust of bread’ (J30:30). Blake’s heroine is not silent, generating nothing. In one of the longest speeches in the poem, she protests passionately against oppression and war (J78–80). She is not a passive mirror; she is not untouchable. Boehme, on the other hand, worships his Sophia as a knight might adore an unattainable lady,13 a stance Blake attributes to the eroticization of violence. Prefiguring Freud by more than a century, Blake understands that repressing the libido has socio-political as well as personal consequences.14 When Blake’s Virgin Vala rejects erotic love, men are driven to ‘rush again to War’ (J68:54), ravaging nations and the earth. Virgin Vala’s repressive chastity controls Albion and his children; they are filled with sexual shame. Blake’s Eternals (akin to angels in heaven) find this ridiculous. They gossip among themselves, saying: Have you known the Judgment that is arisen among the Zoas of Albion where a Man dare hardly to embrace His own Wife for the terrors of Chastity that they call By the name of Morality? (J36:44–7)

Blake’s Eternals understand that by denying our deepest instincts we cause individual anguish and social strife. Self-centred morality in Blake, like selfish desire in Boehme, banishes the feminine-divine. Blake’s Jerusalem is both exalted and degraded. Boehme’s Sophia is never degraded; no one ever calls her ‘the harlot daughter!’ (J18:12). She never consorts with the proletariat. Jerusalem wisely retreats when condemned as a harlot, but when Erin awakens her (J48) she goes to work in Satanic mills (J59–62). She is both an industrial slave and a heavenly bride, winged with

13

For discussions of Boehme and chivalric imagery, see Versluis (1999: 247–58) and Weeks (1991: 120–1). 14 Many thanks to Michael Sommer for this observation. For an extended discussion of Blake and Freud, see George (1980).

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six wings, welcoming all (J86), including those who are troublesome. In Jerusalem’s ‘time of love’ even the baleful serpent may be welcome (J9i). Welcoming serpents can be dangerous. Boehme’s Sophia is not merely priggish when she flees from Adam’s ‘Eternal Worm’, for it can destroy her identity. It threatens to devour her ‘precious pearl’ (TP12)—as Revelation’s red dragon threatens the Sun-Woman’s child. When Jerusalem faces the dragon, it eats her. When she goes into Satanic mills to help her ‘little ones’, she loses her mind. She may be foolish to put herself in such situations, but Blake knew that the foolish can be sent to confound the wise (1Cor.1.27). Though Jerusalem is devoured by ‘Religion hid in War’, the dragon loses power after she dwells in its stomach. In both Blake and Boehme, dragons devour in the name of Christ, using religion to promote Selfhood. In both Blake and Boehme, Selfhood must be destroyed before humanity can be reunited with the feminine-divine. In his Adam/Sophia ‘sequel’ in The Way to Christ, Boehme dramatizes the soul’s return to the Eternal Virgin. Though he still craves her Pearl, the earthy man agrees to renounce desire and enters into Sophia spiritually. Boehme’s ‘paradise bodies’ emphatically lack genitalia; his noble Sophia bridles ‘the Pleasures of the Flesh’ (WCp26). But Blake’s ultimate vision is emphatically erotic; ‘Sexual Threefold’ chariots are the vehicle for human-divine commingling (J98). When Selfhood is annihilated, Albion embraces Jerusalem, coinhering with all things. Once sexual repression is overcome, the burning world and the sacred marriage bring everything into the life of the Divine Body (J99i). Blake’s Jerusalem, his Woman Clothed With the Sun, is not an unattainable lady, but the place and the song of the human-divine who cares for every living thing. She frees all from fear to rejoice in creativity and erotic spirituality (J97–9). Like Jesus, she is an earthly working person as well as a cosmic being.

JOANNA SOUTHCOTT, A WOMAN CLOTHED WITH THE SUN Joanna Southcott was an earthly working person who claimed to be a cosmic being. Though Blake was not one of her disciples, Southcott was part of his social and cultural landscape while he was creating Jerusalem. Her dramatic ministry spread throughout London from 1802 to 1814, inspiring people from all walks of life. Two of Blake’s associates and friends, William Sharp and William Owen Pughe, were among her most devoted followers.15 They firmly

15 Unless otherwise noted, Brown’s detailed Southcott biography (2002: especially 178–246) is my source for Sharp’s and Pughe’s close association with her.

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believed that Revelation’s Woman Clothed with the Sun was incarnate in Southcott. Sharp urged Blake to join the Southcott flock, which grew to over 100,000 followers after she announced (in 1813) that she, a 63-year-old virgin, had been visited by the Holy Spirit and would give birth to Shiloh, a second Messiah. To her close followers, Southcott was like an Emanation, a dynamic bridge between the human and the divine—and they were like characters in her Apocalypse. As the Woman Clothed with the Sun, Southcott, like Blake’s angelmorphic heroine, was conjoined with a host of biblical women; like Blake’s heroine, she enjoyed erotic comminglings with Jesus. Blake was intrigued by Joanna and wrote a poem about her, but he differs from her theologically. As we shall see, Jerusalem’s longing for forgiveness, liberty, and love challenges the righteousness, obedience, and vindication preached by Southcott.

Southcott, Sharp, and Pughe Joanna Southcott (1750–1814) grew up on a Devonshire farm in the parish of Ottery St. Mary (where Coleridge’s father was the vicar).16 In 1777 she went to Exeter, worked as a domestic servant and as an upholsterer, and coped with what would now be called sexual harassment, defending her good name in a court case.17 She studied the Bible with Methodists and began having prophetic experiences, predicting harvests, economic slumps, impending war, and deaths. In 1801 Southcott started publishing a series of books called The Strange Effects of Faith. In her first book she enters her divine role: . . . now I must stand the trial of what I say, as I am ordered to put in print, the woman in the 12th chap. of Revelation is myself . . . (1.40)18

With the spiritual and financial support of William Sharp (among others), she moved from Exeter to London in 1802. Sharp, one of Britain’s most successful engravers, was seven years older than Blake, earning as much as £1,000 for a single plate (Bentley 2001: 66). Blake was lucky to get £80 for his highly finished ‘Fall of Rosamund’ in 1783 (BR809) and in 1815 he engraved simpler plates for Flaxman’s Hesiod at 5 guineas apiece (BR773). Despite this economic disparity, I think Mee is right to call Blake and Sharp friends (1992: 48–9, 221) for they traversed similar political, professional, and spiritual paths. John Flaxman’s obituary describes how Flaxman, Thomas Stothard, George

16 John Coleridge was headmaster of the local school and vicar from 1760–1781 (Holmes 1989: 3–5, 21). His son, Samuel Taylor, was born in 1772. 17 Unless otherwise noted, Southcott’s biographical information comes from Brown (2002). 18 Southcott’s books are numbered. I cite them by number and page, using the editions from the Panacea Society in Bedford.

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Cumberland, William Sharp, and William Blake were ‘in the habit of frequently passing the evenings in drawing and designing’ (BR479).19 Flaxman, Blake, and Sharp associated with the Swedenborgians in the 1780s. Both Sharp and Blake made engravings for Joseph Johnson, the radical bookseller (BR60). Both supported the American and French Revolutions, Sharp more materially than his younger colleague, for he paid for Tom Paine’s room and board (including gin) in Bromley in 1792 (Keane 1995: 340–2).20 Sharp was active in the Society for Constitutional Information (meeting at the Freemason’s Tavern) and was summoned by the Privy Council in 1794 on suspicion of treason because of his friendship with Horne Tooke. He responded to the Council’s enervating questions by asking William Pitt if the members of the council would care to subscribe to a portrait of Kosciusko, the Polish patriot, he was then engraving. Amused by this commercial audacity, Sharp’s interrogators dismissed him (Brown 2003: 28–9). His business sense established his innocence. Shortly after his arraignment, Sharp’s radical energy veered toward religion. As Blake devoted himself to articulating an emerging prophetic vision peopled by Zoas and Emanations, Sharp dedicated himself to more corporeal English prophets, who sought to make heaven on earth. After 1794 Sharp enthusiastically supported Richard Brothers (1757–1824), a retired naval officer who planned to lead his followers to the Holy Land to rebuild Jerusalem.21 Sharp transferred his allegiance to Southcott after reading her books and questioning her with six other prominent men. They became known as Southcott’s ‘Seven Stars’.22 William Owen Pughe, a Welsh lexicographer and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries,23 also joined the Southcottians. He became friends with both Sharp and Blake. Owen24 came to London in 1776 (Bentley 1986: 252), and Blake probably read his translations of Welsh legends in the 1790s. The poet Robert Southey derisively commented on Blake’s and Owen’s common passion for ‘the Bardic system’ and its ‘old patriarchal truths’ (BR530–1). In 1806 Owen Pughe commissioned the largest painting Blake ever created, ‘The Ancient Britons’ (BR308).25 19

Citing The Annual Biography and Obituary for the Year 1828. Tatham (BR685–6) and Gilchrist (1863: 96–7) tell the story of how Blake inspired Paine to escape to France after Paine’s rousing speech at a meeting of ‘The Friends of Liberty’ in September 1792. Blake considered himself a member of ‘the Paine set’ (Bentley 2001: 112–13). 21 Sharp wanted Blake’s best friend, John Flaxman, to be the architect for their New Jerusalem (Paley 1973: 265), a building project about which Brothers carefully wrote. In his Description of Jerusalem (written in 1801 from an asylum in Islington), Brothers describes Jerusalem’s streets and buildings (down to the dimensions of the windows), and asserts that this will be a city of social justice and welfare, ruled by himself. For an excellent study of Brothers’ life and work, see Madden 2010. 22 As in Rev.1.16, 20; 2.1; 3.1. For more about Southcott’s ‘Seven Stars’, see Brown (2002: 102–3); for Sharp’s position among them, see Brown (2003: 22–3). 23 He was elected in 1793 (Bentley 1986: 252). 24 When Owen inherited a small estate he added ‘Pughe’ to his name. 25 The painting has disappeared. 20

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Owen Pughe was not one of Southcott’s ‘Seven Stars’, but his friend Southey called him one of Joanna’s ‘four and twenty elders’ (BR530).26 Blake’s friend Flaxman gossiped with the journalist Crabb Robinson about Sharp’s attempt ‘to make a convert’ of Blake (BR319–20), who lived nearby.27 Clearly Blake, Sharp, and Pughe inhabited similar imaginative and cultural worlds. Sharp and Pughe were as devoted to Southcott as Boehme was to his vision of Celestial Sophia. Southcott was their way of entering into divine drama, as Jerusalem is Albion’s way to Christ. Like a son of Albion in Jerusalem (J50.20), Sharp was both human and an angelic star in Southcott’s visionary theatre. In October of 1802 (when Blake was in Felpham in Sussex), Sharp penned an addendum to Joanna’s 12th book: . . . I have found her but a simple woman; innocent and without suspicion, who cannot have any wisdom or foreknowledge of her own . . . all her predictions have come true, though no one believed them . . . In the twelfth chapter of Revelations, her character is described. . . . I firmly believe that the truths which are in the Bible are now hastening on to be accomplished. (12.127–8)

Sharp’s first gift to Joanna included a framed print of the Virgin and Child.28 Joanna likens herself to the Virgin Mary, speaking with the Spirit who declares: As for My Sake thou hast renounced all And from thy Mother’s womb I thee did call So MARY and JOANNA let them see . . . That she is come to testify of Me And now TWO MARYS let the Public see . . . (12.67)

Until the day he died, Sharp felt that Joanna embodied Revelation’s Woman (Brown 2003: 45–7)—who is typologically linked with the Virgin Mary.

Erotic Spirituality—Southcott and Blake Southcott derived authority from her virginity. For Blake, however, virginity is no visionary credential; virginity positively obstructs human–divine communion. 26

See Rev.4 Blake could walk from South Molton Street down Oxford Street (a street running through his visionary Jerusalem) to Sharp’s home at 50 Great Titchfield Street in about fifteen minutes. Pughe wrote in his 1811 Welsh diary: ‘Went in the afternoon to see my mother . . . My poor mother is very ill . . . we were going out to W. Sharp and when we were at the door Mrs. W. Blake came to ask about the painting of the three escapees . . . ’ (BR308). Mrs Blake not only knew Pughe; she knew where to look for him when he was not at home! (Bentley 1986: 254). Had Pughe’s mother been healthy, Catherine Blake might also have known to look for Pughe at Joanna Southcott’s home in Weston Place (now St Pancras Station) because he was often there. (Thanks to Gordon Allen at the Panacea Society, Bedford, for this information 5/2005.) 28 He also gave her an unframed engraving of his previous guru, Richard Brothers (Brown 2002: 100). 27

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Jerusalem’s Eternals proclaim: ‘Establishment of Truth depends on destruction of Falsehood continually / On Circumcision, not on Virginity!’ (J55:65–6). They understand that erotic and intellectual barriers must be removed (i.e. circumcision represents the barrier removed; virginity is the barrier left in place). Blake, however, would have appreciated how Joanna calls metaphorical ‘harlots’ to God’s feast. Her Spirit proclaims: The Harlots here may now appear . . . For I shall all embrace The Jews and Gentiles both I’ll clear They both came from one race And one they’ll be—you all shall see (14.6)

Yet, according to Southcott, those who can think (as Blake does in his ‘Everlasting Gospel’) that Christ’s ‘Mother should an Harlot been’ (K756) must be servants of Satan.29 Blake’s Jerusalem, with Jesus, pulverizes moral paradigms—whereas Southcott’s dramatic ministry upholds them (1.37). Enacting the Woman Clothed With the Sun, Southcott is a Second Eve, wreaking vengeance upon Satan, casting the blame wrongly attributed to women back upon the serpent (1.40; 8.8). Like Boehme’s Wisdom/Woman, Southcott (with her followers) brings about the bruising of the serpent, an image recurring throughout her published books. It is her central theological metaphor.30 She proclaims: ‘the Woman still crieth for vengeance against the old serpent!’ (3.20). In Jerusalem, however, the notion of vengeance is finally annihilated. Serpents may be dangerous, but they can be redeemed. In Plate 9, one of Jerusalem’s daughters pets and feeds a vast serpent; she does not bruise his head. When Albion finally awakens to a vision of Christ and the embrace of Jerusalem, ‘the all-wondrous serpent’ regenerates to ‘Humanize / In the Forgiveness of Sins’ (J98:44–5). Good and evil no longer exist, with their accompanying ‘Fiends of righteousness’ (J9). Joanna Southcott wears garments of righteousness.31 But Blake’s Jerusalem emanates in naked beauty (J86, 96i). When Jerusalem and Jesus embrace, elemental forgiveness obliterates good and evil, righteousness and sin. Eros and agape coalesce (Hagstrum 1985: 110–11). Blake’s human-divine embraces are not merely metaphorical; they are also ontological. Blake knew about ontological human-divine embraces not only from books like Abyssinian Enoch and Ovid’s Metamorphoses,32 but

29 She condemns such ‘blasphemy’ (expressed by a Dissenting minister) in her Second Book of the Sealed Prophecies (36.76). 30 Kennett’s third chapter (2006) explores this metaphor. Also see Southcott 12.17, 18.19, PN#222: 461. 31 Kennett also discusses this image (ch.4., pp. 122–5; ch.6, pp. 222–3). 32 According to Samuel Palmer, Blake ‘delighted in Ovid’ (BR752).

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probably also from what his friends told him about Joanna Southcott—as we shall now see. Southcott’s most devoted followers, like Sharp and Pughe, were convinced of the spiritual reality of their leader’s divine visitations. On July 3, 1804 (the year Blake began etching Jerusalem) Sharp received a letter from Southcott’s amanuensis, Jane Townley: . . . whether awake or asleep she does not know; but she remembers that she was quite awake when she felt the hand of the Lord upon her; but in the heavenly and beautiful manner, . . . and was afraid to move, fearing she should remove His heavenly hand, which she felt as perfect as ever woman felt the hand of her husband . . . (24.113)

Joanna goes on to describe her divine lover: The collar of his shirt appeared unbuttoned, and the skin of his bosom appeared white as the driven snow. Such was the beauty of the heavenly figure that appeared before me in a disordered state . . . He put out one of his legs to me, that was perfectly like mine, no larger . . . (24.113–14)33

Blake may have seen this letter; he seems to allude to it. The first line of his poem, ‘On the Virginity of the Virgin Mary & Joanna Southcott’ (incorrectly dated by Erdman34) parallels the opening phrase quoted above in the letter Sharp possessed: Whateer is done to her she cannot know And if you ask her she will swear it so Whether ’tis good or evil none’s to blame No one can take the pride no one the shame (K418)

Paley thinks this quatrain is a hostile critique of ‘the doctrine of Virgin Birth with its concomitant elevation of celibacy and its denial of the erotic’ (Paley 1973: 285).35 I think this little poem does not deny the erotic; it denies shame and blame. The Virgin and Joanna may not understand how the Lord acts

33 Joanna then directs that this letter should be ‘sent as it is to Foley, Bruce, Sharp, and Taylor’ (24.114). 34 Erdman (the notebook editor) observes: ‘Reference to Joanna Southcott’s announcement of October 1802 that she was to give birth to the second Christ puts the date then or later’ (1977: N2 transcript). Joanna did not publicly announce her divine pregnancy until February, 1814, but she was prophesying in London in 1802. Blake’s notebook was not compiled in a linear fashion. The Southcott quatrain is written over sketches for Hayley’s 1802 animal ballads; the next page is a Robert Blake watercolor (before 1787); another page includes a dated entry from 1793 surmounted by one from 1807. Blake wrote the Southcott quatrain between 1804 and 1814. In 1802 Blake lived in Felpham, spiritually and aesthetically contending with his well-meaning patron, William Hayley. According to the Panacea Society archives, there were no Southcottians there. 35 Paley reiterates this argument (1983: 287–9). Connolly expands on Paley, calling the poem a ‘vitriolic’ epigram (2002: 113).

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erotically upon them, but though Jerusalem’s eponymous heroine very consciously enjoys commingling with Jesus (J20, J79), Blake never mocks the innocent. As we have seen, Sharp found Joanna ‘simple . . . innocent and without suspicion’. Blake’s quatrain may be about the kind of innocence experienced by his ‘Little Girl Lost’, carried naked into a paradise realm while sleeping (K112–13).36 In 1814 Joanna Southcott revealed that a subsequent visitation had impregnated her with Shiloh, the man-child of Revelation 12. Her ghostly pregnancy lasted over a year, a pregnancy confirmed by several doctors (Brown 2002: 264–8). She was 63, a virgin and, like Sarah, would bear the promised one in her old age. In an unpublished letter she describes the beginnings of this Incarnation: I not only felt a power to shake my whole body, but felt it is impossible for me to describe upon my womb. . . . the answers given me that . . . I had nothing to fear, it was the power of the Lord working upon me . . .37

Over 100,000 followers looked forward to the birth of Joanna’s Shiloh. Throughout her fourteen-month pregnancy hundreds of devotees sent costly gifts to the expected Messiah. On Christmas Day 1814, Joanna went into something resembling labor and within forty hours she was dead. No child was born. A small group of devoted followers, including Sharp and Pughe, believed that this fulfilled the prophecy in Revelation 12, that the Child must be caught up ‘to God and his throne’ (Brown 2003: 39). Sharp and Pughe believed that Shiloh exists in a spiritual form, in what Boehme would call a paradise body;38 Joanna is eternally the character she enacted, the Woman Clothed with the Sun.

Visionary Enactments But enacting a divine role can be risky. Blake invites his readers to ‘enter into’ his images, but cautions against appropriating the attributes of such characters. No one reader can contain Jerusalem, Jesus, Wisdom, or any other

36 Hagstrum (1985: 112–13) discusses Lyca’s innocent sexuality. I do not think Blake criticizes Joanna Southcott until Jerusalem’s Plate 90, though her proclaimed pregnancy probably informs Gwendolen’s attempt to create an infant which produces ‘a winding worm’ (J82). 37 Southcott, ‘The Conception Communication’. Copied from Joanna Southcott’s Letter addressed to G. Turner of Leeds (PN#124, p.1). 38 For more information about Shiloh’s subsequent history and Southcott’s spiritual descendents, see The Panacea Society accessed 24/10/2005. For accounts of Sharp and Pughe’s ongoing devotion, see Brown (2003: 27–47). Sharp, the custodian of Joanna’s box of sealed prophecies, was known as the ‘Rock . . . steadfast in the faith’ (Brown 2003: 38–9, citing Thomas Foley’s letter to Charles Taylor, 1815, BL Add. MS 47795, ff.65–8).

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prophetic role. I think Blake writes in response to Southcott (and Richard Brothers) in Plate 90: No Individual ought to appropriate to Himself Or to his Emanation any of the Universal Characteristics Of David or of Eve, of the Woman or of the Lord . . . Those who dare appropriate to themselves Universal Attributes Are the blasphemous Selfhoods and must be broken asunder. A Vegetated Christ & Virgin Eve are the Hermaphroditic Blasphemy . . . (J90:28–35)

Joanna invites her followers all to be brides (1.42–3; 64.3), yet she appropriates to herself ‘the Universal Characteristics’ of the Woman in Revelation 12, brooking no prophetic rivalry from the likes of Richard Brothers, who identified himself with Revelation’s man-child as well as with King David (13.2–10).39 Southcott proclaimed redemption was to come through the Woman, not a misguided man! She encouraged Sharp to repudiate Brothers,40 and she declared publicly before the Recorder of London that she was the Woman Clothed with the Sun.41 She believed that this divine role gave her the authority to exercise what Blake would call ‘fibers of dominion’ (J88:13). As the SunWoman and an avenging Eve,42 she required obedience from her disciples, especially her ‘Seven Stars’. In an unpublished letter Joanna speaks through her Spirit: So men like Sharp must all submit To lay their wisdom at my feet . . . (PN#115: 137–42)

Blake asserts that appropriating the characteristics of Eve or the Woman inflates Selfhood. Becoming a divine archetype blots out one’s own minute particularity and that, in Blake’s vision, constricts the Holy Ghost within each living being. When Blake claims to be a prophet, he invites his readers to join him in that great task. All can contribute to the building of Jerusalem, laboring like Los or Blake’s heroine. His famous ‘Jerusalem’ hymn (prefacing Milton, K481) ends with a quotation from Numbers 11.29: ‘Would to God that all the Lord’s people were Prophets.’ Blake’s ‘Jerusalem is Liberty’, seeking obedience from no one (J26, 54:1). In Jerusalem when the feminine seeks precedence over the masculine and the masculine over the feminine, each becomes a selfcentered consuming Spectre, arrogating everything to itself. A Vegetated Christ cannot expand in infinite translucence; a Virgin Eve does not create. Albion’s 39 See Brothers 1798: x, 32–5, 68, 97. Madden (2010) discusses Southcott’s responses to Brothers in detail. 40 Together they defaced as many as 1,000 copies of Sharp’s engraving of Brothers (Brown 2002: 195–6). 41 She did this with Sharp’s help on October 18, 1805 (Brown 2002: 190). 42 Kennett (2006) discusses this conflation (Ch. 6, pp. 212–22).

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‘blasphemous Selfhood’ traps him in a contracted body, enmeshes him in bonds of righteousness, blights his sexuality—and prevents him from loving. In Eden/Eternity by contrast, Jerusalem’s ‘embraces are cominglings from the head even to the feet / And not a pompous High Priest entering by a Secret Place’ (J69:43–4). Neither Female Will nor phallic pomposities blight Edenic love. Edenic comminglings both include and transcend mundane erotica. The place of generation is ‘the point of mutual forgiveness’ (J7:66). The forgiving embrace in Blake can connect and transform not only the lover and beloved, but also the minute particulars of the surrounding world. In the forgiving embrace, a closed circumference can open and the centre (the centre of being) can emanate outward. Such love can be difficult, for it may entail taking on sin, as the Emanation does when she takes responsibility for Albion’s fall, crying: ‘I have slain him in my sleep!’ (J94:25). There is neither shame nor blame here; no one is condemned. Though Blake may have been intrigued by accounts of Southcott’s divine visitations and her imaginative theology, his Jerusalem seeks not to destroy or to dominate, but to transform even serpents and alleged enemies. Her love reveals the naked beauty of forgiveness. Now we must consider her story.

IN BLAK E’ S P OE M Throughout Blake’s illuminated poem we see and hear Jerusalem in many ways and in different states of being; initially we see her in naked beauty. In the title page (J2i) she appears like a winged fairy, sleeping deeply while four winged creatures hover around her. In Plates 26 and 92 she wears a golden gown; Vala tries to veil her in Plate 32’s design and tramples her in Plate 47. She sleeps, not only in Plate 2, but also in Plate 37, and is falling into Generation’s vegetated state in Plate 23. She may be the naked woman enclosed in a pillar of fire in Plates 5 and 29. Critics disagree as to whether it is Jerusalem riding in the serpent-drawn chariot of Ulro in Plate 46 (P203–4), or perching on a sun-flower lotus in Plate 53.43 I think such images are deliberately ambiguous. That ambiguity can give rise to the expanded perception Blake wants to inspire in us. Jerusalem’s words and images combine to change the way we see. We, Blake’s readers, are like the Eternals (J31) who see one thing as many different things when our infinite senses are contracted in time; in Eden/ Eternity our perception expands and we can see how those different things animate one whole. The woman rising from a tomb in Plate 93’s design can be

43

Paley (1991: 215–16); Mitchell (1978: 201).

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seen as Enitharmon, as well as Jerusalem or Vala (P288). In the text she is also England, who is Brittannia. From an expanded perspective, the woman rising can be seen as One, human-divine, who is uniquely Jerusalem and Vala, Erin, England and Brittannia, and all her daughters; she is the Emanation of the Giant Albion. Throughout the poem the Emanation may be naked or clothed or ‘winged with six wings’. She can be a double-female, commingling in Beulah’s ‘Lily of Havilah’ both verbally, in Plate 19, and visually in Plate 28. Winged and bedecked with bells, Jerusalem (the Emanation) appears in Plate 14’s design, hovering above the sleeping Albion, foreshadowing Los’s description of her descent in Plate 86. Her kaleidoscopic beauty makes her one of Blake’s most dynamic characters.

Her Character and Story It is perplexing that a character so dynamic should be seen as static (Dortort 1998: 291–6) or passive (Paley 1983: 182–3). Brenda Webster ignores how Jerusalem’s erotic joy can transform Albion and the world when she denigrates Blake for feeling ‘that female sexuality can be dispensed with altogether’ in Jerusalem (1983: 222–3). But Jerusalem’s sexuality inspires forgiveness and peace, concepts less frequently depicted than vengeance and war in art and literature.44 As peace and forgiveness are marginalized by strategic analysts, so is Blake’s heroine by too many readers. Her story of forgiveness is the matrix (or ‘golden string’) around which the poem’s other stories can constellate. When we consider the whole poem in Part Two of this book, it will be helpful to keep Jerusalem’s story in mind. The following pages discuss how she moves through the poem. Jerusalem protests compassionately in Chapter One, is overwhelmed in Chapter Two, goes mad in Chapter Three, but by Chapter Four she resembles Isaiah or Jeremiah, waxing uncannily prophetic in one of the poem’s longest speeches. She shrinks from bellicose Hand in Plate 26, but by Plate 92 she rises, as if drawn by Michelangelo, statuesque above the shadowy heads of the disembodied Zoas. In Chapter Four she faces the great dragon containing Vala, her own shadow. Shadowy Vala is part of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem wants to love her. In Eden/Eternity, Jerusalem commingles happily with Vala, but in Ulro, Vala commingles with no one. In Ulro, Vala wants to destroy Jerusalem, and Jerusalem must contend with her (as Los does with his Spectre). Jerusalem is slow to do so partly because Vala is supposed to be like a sister and a friend; 44 When creating peace education curricula for the Myrdals Stiftelse in Stockholm (in 1987) I found that many peace anthologies were actually anti-war collections. (Peace is much more than the absence of war.)

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she does not expect Vala to attack her. When Vala’s lust for power and Albion’s fury destroy Jerusalem’s children (‘the little ones’), Jerusalem’s maternal anguish initially eclipses any anger she might feel. Anguish inspires her wanderings (J5:47, 14:32), finally immobilizing her (J23i, 37i). Yet even when thrust into the mills of Ulro, Jerusalem still longs for the embrace of the Saviour through whose love Albion and Vala can be restored. Like Christ she suffers for those who reject her, and like Christ she rises.

Chapter One The poem opens in Ulro, where Albion banishes Jerusalem. He wants nothing to do with her or her lovely daughters beaming ‘into the Divine Bosom’ (J4:14–15); they bring every thing that lives to life in the Divine Body. Therefore, Albion, infected with Selfhood (which isolates him from others), despises and rejects them. His jealous fears unleash a culture of war which devours Jerusalem’s ‘little ones’ in ‘the delights of cruelty’ (J4, 5:1–15). Albion destroys them because Jerusalem’s love undermines his empire building. She loves ‘little ones’ from every land; in her emanation (her way of being) the concept of ‘enemy’ does not exist. Because he needs enemies Albion banishes her, and initially Jerusalem and Vala mourn together ‘for the sons & daughters of Albion’ (J5:60–4). But Selfhood splits them apart and that division enmeshes humanity ‘in a woven mantle of pestilence & war’ (J7:20). When severed from Vala and the daughters of Albion, Jerusalem cannot fill humanity with liberty and love. Jerusalem gets divided not only from Albion and her beloved Jesus, but also from her Emanation friends. Paley sees the female forms in Plate 5’s design as Jerusalem’s different states of being (P137), but they could also be the four main Emanations, separating from her and thus weakening her. Only Los cares for Jerusalem; only he labours to protect her children and her sexuality, ‘the Religion of Generation’ (J7). In Jerusalem ‘Generation’ can lead to Eden; erotic and holy, ‘Generation’ is an ‘Image of Regeneration’. Los tells us that the corporeal ‘birthplace of the Lamb’ (the vagina) is the point from which forgiveness emanates—yet Albion’s fallen sons seek to make that erotic garden ‘the Abomination of Desolation’ (J7:65–70),45 filling humanity with absurd and deadly shame. Erin and her redemptive daughters (emerging from Los’s creative furnaces) try to help and comfort Jerusalem, who laments for her lost children. The sick swan-woman depicted in Plate 11 may be emblematic of her sorrow and confusion. This sorrow animates Jerusalem’s

45

See Dan.11:31, 12.11; Matt.24.15; Mark 13:14.

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shadow Vala, who wants to control Albion. She can do so when Jerusalem is banished and vilified. Though she ‘wanders far away’ in Ulro, in Eden/Eternity Jerusalem is ‘the Bride, the Lambs wife’ (J12:41–4). Ulro, Generation, Beulah, and Eden (the different states into which all can go) are eternally present. These different states are as fluid as Blake’s characters: they can overlap; they can also exist simultaneously. For instance, in Plate 14 Jerusalem’s depressed maternal anguish (J14:31–4) contrasts with the design depicting Los’s vision of her, winged beneath a rainbow, bells of peace tinkling around her knees. In that plate we hear Jerusalem suffering in Ulro and Generation, but we can see her, luminous, in Beulah/Eden. If we read with double-vision (see Chapter 2) we may see, as Boehme did, that ‘Heaven is every where present’ (WCss.IV.98). Unfortunately, Selfhood can hamper our visionary capacities. Again, in Plate 18, what we see is not what we hear (or read). We see naked angels, crowned with lilies and roses, flanking naked lovers—but we hear the fury of Albion’s sons, severing souls from bodies, and filling humanity with notions of sin and shame. We learn that in the time of love ‘Vala produc’d the Bodies, Jerusalem gave the souls’ (J18:7) but imperialist fury subverts that cocreation and the peace the naked angels may offer. The flower-crowned angels can be seen not only as Jerusalem and Vala, but also as Jerusalem and ‘Shiloh the Masculine Emanation among the Flowers of Beulah’ (J49:47) (Grant 1969: 312). Masculine Shiloh is the Emanation of feminine France. As Jerusalem and Vala co-create embodied souls, so could the Emanations of Albion and France co-create peace. Bellicose Hand and Hyle, like fallen Albion, want nothing to do with peace. They seek ‘war and princedom and victory!’ (J4:32). Jerusalem’s ‘dishonourable forgiveness’ threatens their ruthless will to power, and (as they deify Vala) they declare that Jerusalem’s ‘Children of Pollution’ should be slain upon their altars (J18:29–33). Ironically, they do not understand that they too are Jerusalem’s children: they are invoking their own doom! Nature and culture fall into ruin (J19:1–15) as Albion tries to imprison Jerusalem in his darkening bosom. Albion may be in the mindset of Ulro, but Jerusalem is in Beulah in his bosom. Though excoriated by Albion and his sons, she continually seeks to commingle, singing ‘in a sweet moony night’ with Vala (J19:41–2). Canopied with wings and a mild moon, Jerusalem and Vala divide and reunite ‘into many female forms’ (J19:45). This Beulah-love horrifies Albion, though it delights critics exploring homoerotic themes in Blake.46 Jerusalem and Vala commingle ‘in eternal tears’, a response appropriate to Albion’s fall, but Vala uses their grief to arrogate power to herself. She tries to manipulate Jerusalem’s sympathy and enmesh her in spectrous shame. 46 Mitchell (1978: 206–7); Hobson (2000: 150–62). Connolly expands upon their insights (2002: 214–18).

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Jerusalem is uninterested in shame or blame. She argues for forgiveness, emphatically stating that ‘mercy is not a Sin’ (J20:23). Praising love and ‘kind forgiveness’, she urges Vala to unfold the worldwide web of her Veil ‘in pity and love!’. She begs her not to harm the ‘little ones’ and invokes ‘the time of love’ when she, Vala, Albion, and Jesus enjoyed an erotically spiritual foursome (J20:25–40). Jerusalem cannot understand why this time of forgiveness and love has passed away. Suddenly Albion groans and curses madly, castigating Vala as Lear castigates Goneril and Regan (Paley 1983: 221–2). Casting out Jerusalem, he conflates her with Lear’s youngest daughter. Raging he cries: Jerusalem! dissembler Jerusalem! I look into thy bosom! I discover thy secret places: Cordella! I behold Thee whom I thought pure as the heavens in innocence and fear. (J21:19–21)

Albion also conflates Jerusalem with Sabrina, the heroine of Milton’s Comus, based on Geoffrey of Monmouth’s tragic history in which the king’s illegitimate daughter, drowned by his jealous wife, gives her name to the river now called the Severn (D353). Of course, Blake’s Jerusalem is not a passive victim. She confronts her raving father, challenging his Ulro-attitude as she asks: Why wilt thou number every little fiber of my Soul Spreading them out before the Sun like stalks of flax to dry? (J22:20–1)

Her self-assertion, like Cordelia’s, intensifies the patriarch’s rage. Albion groans and curses, but Jerusalem, stretching ‘toward the Moon’, undercuts his wrath with the poem’s most pertinent question: Why should Punishment Weave the Veil with Iron Wheels of War When forgiveness might it Weave with wings of Cherubim? (J22:34–5)

The fabric of society can be woven with mutually beneficial fibres of love. Albion despises this, and condemns Jerusalem. She, though falling into the sleep of death, tries to save Albion, calling to him in a sepulchral voice: ‘Father once piteous! Is pity a sin? . . . Thou art my Father and my Brother. Why hast thou hidden me?’ (J23:9–11).47 For a moment Albion beholds ‘Humanity and Pity’, but he is dazzled by Vala’s vengeful Veil of Moral Virtue. Yet as he builds Babylon, the city of Vala, he remembers the bliss of Jerusalem (J24). Her peace brought prosperity. Her ‘blessings of gold’ brought every nation to walk ‘in the Exchanges of London’ and London walked in every nation. Jerusalem crossed oceans, spreading ‘from bright Japan & China to Hesperia, France & England’ (J24:48). A passive, static, or helpless character cannot manage international 47 She has the courage and tenacity of Antigone, whose father was also her brother. (In the Divine Body, Zoas and Emanations are not constricted by Generation’s parameters.)

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systems the way Jerusalem can.48 In the peace of Jerusalem, disparate cultures, art and commerce, reason and imagination, the wife and the harlot, all fruitfully coexist.

Chapter Two Plate 26 is the bridge between Chapters One and Two. In it we see Blake’s heroine recoiling from Hand, whose mantle of flame is emblazoned: ‘Jerusalem is Named Liberty.’ Unlike Boehme’s Sophia (also called Liberty), Jerusalem has not fled from her oppressor; she resists Albion’s Selfhood (until Plate 37). Even when overwhelmed she wants forgiveness to prevail. Chapter Two begins with a prefatory hymn, which answers the questions posed in the famous ‘Jerusalem’ hymn prefacing Blake’s Milton.49 Here (J27) her feet walk with Jesus upon England’s pleasant pastures but ‘Druid pillars of war’ displace her. She withers (temporally) in England’s darkening land even as she shines (eternally) with her beloved Jesus ‘in the Human Form . . . translucent all within’ (J27:52–6). The story resumes with Plate 28’s design. The image is ambiguous: Jerusalem may be embracing Jesus; she may be commingling with Vala. The androgynous figures are angelmorphic, unconfined by gender. Their commingling disgusts Albion; it threatens his ‘patriarchal pomp’; he is addicted to dominating others and seeks to obliterate liberty and love. Jerusalem (who embodies liberty and love) spends most of Chapter Two in furnaces, enmeshed by iron threads, veiled, threatened, or trampled. Finally, she retreats into the sleep of Beulah. This retreat is not a sign of weakness or passivity but of her need to escape from the destructive power of Albion. By Plate 45 she needs to be rescued, but no prince on a white horse comes to help. It is Erin, the maternal humanity, who releases her from the opaque bosom of Albion. In the chapter’s opening scene, Albion’s pride (like that of the ‘stiff necked’ Israelites) has destroyed Jerusalem (J29:16–22). Though she lies in ruin and ‘all is confusion’ (J29:82), she cannot be controlled and continues to resist Albion’s dominion. She wants Albion to be freely human and divine: Albion, I cannot be thy Wife; thine own Minute Particulars Belong to God alone, and all thy little ones are holy; They are of faith . . . (J31:44–6)

But shadowy Vala enmeshes her. As shuttles of war ‘sing in the sky’ Jerusalem feels ‘the iron threads of love & jealousy & despair’ which naked Vala spins 48 Jeanne Moskal notes that Jerusalem’s forgiveness honors ‘the identities of oriental and occidental’ as well as ‘the differences between England and France’ (1994: 98). 49 ‘And did those feet in ancient time . . . ’.

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from between her legs in the illustration accompanying Jerusalem’s protest (J31i). In Plate 32’s design, Vala lifts her blue veil to cover the naked beauty of Jerusalem and her children. Here golden Jerusalem looks as if she might try to reason with shadowy Vala, but by Plate 36 she can only tremble as her children are driven asunder by Los’s hammer. (This fragmentation intensifies as ‘England who is Brittannia’ divides into Jerusalem and Vala in J36:28.) By Plate 41 Jerusalem is exhausted, seeking to ‘repose in death’, a state foreshadowed by the design in Plate 37, where she sleeps on a bier on a black sea, guarded by a spectrous pterodactyl. Beulah’s daughters hide her, while the Eternals in ‘Majestic Form’ enquire after Jerusalem (J42:66–8). They cannot find her. Like Persephone in the underworld, her absence blights the earth.50 War spreads. America is ‘closed out’ from Jerusalem’s Liberty and mutual forgiveness. (Blake’s associates included abolitionists and he knew that America’s revolution did not grant liberty and the pursuit of happiness to people of color.51) In the absence of Jerusalem, Albion and his sons madly pursue ‘the artificial riches of the Canaanite / Like lakes of liquid lead’ (J43:62–3), exploiting the physical resources of what is now the Middle East. Additionally, they are addicted to sin, atonement, and vengeance; this perverts divine vision (J46:27–8). They are headed for hell, like the figures in the serpent-drawn chariot in plate 46.52 In Plate 47 we see Vala trampling Jerusalem and hear them both howling in the furnaces (J47:3). Violence escalates. To protect Jerusalem from this violence, Erin (‘Maternal Love’) appears on a rescue mission. Erin believes that Jerusalem must be separated from Albion’s interior, for if she remains in his stony and opaque heart she could become like Vala, a ‘Virgin-Harlot of War’. From Plates 48 to 50, Erin labours to separate Jerusalem from Albion’s corruption. The cosmic Divine Body joins Erin’s rescue attempt; its divine finger moves upon Los’s furnaces, preparing a place where Jerusalem can be safe, but in that sanctuary what is feminine and divine is separated from humanity and corporeal life (as in the story of Boehme’s Sophia). Bursting from the tomb of Albion’s bosom, Jerusalem tries to put off her human form. Erin believes that Jerusalem’s liberation, however incomplete and painful, can preserve Beulah and the hope of Eden, but ironically this redemptive separation creates more chaos. Jerusalem cannot emanate in isolation.

50

Walchuk (2009) writes insightfully about Jerusalem and Persephone. Paley (1983: 107–10) likens Jerusalem to Persephone when discussing Plate 46. 51 For more on Blake and slavery, see Erdman (1954: 24–6, 482); Glausser (1998: 75–91); Makdisi (2003: 155–9). 52 With Beer (1969: 187) and Wicksteed (1954: 185–6) I think Jerusalem rides beside Albion; Paley thinks the female figure is Vala (P203–4)—but as we know, Vala and Jerusalem are part of one whole.

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Chapter Three Erin’s salvific separation backfires throughout Chapter Three, which is particularly convoluted in terms of narrative structure, imagery, and the characters’ identities. A song can turn into a divine vision within a nightmare surmounted by an image of heavenly peace. In this chapter, Jerusalem loses sight of who she is, which is not surprising—for she, like Los, is blighted by Albion’s pathological empiricism. The debate about the identity of the blue-robed soporific Emanation perched on a sunflower with cosmic wings (J53i) (P215–16) may reflect Jerusalem’s own confusion; her journey in this chapter is filled with both divine vision and delusion. In Plate 59 Jerusalem descends to the Satanic mills where little ones labor, but that factory work ravages her mind. She loses sight of divine forgiveness when assaulted by the slaves’ ‘Song of the Lamb’, for that song accuses her of harlotry, of sacrificing ‘among the Gods of Asia’ (J60:22–38). What she sees and hears warps her divine vision. When Jesus appears, she momentarily mimics Albion (J4:23), wondering if her Saviour is ‘but a delusive shadow?’ Tormented, she cries to her beloved Jesus: ‘I am deluded by the turning mills . . . ’ and by ‘visions of pity & love’ (J60:54–64). Her care for Albion is destroying her. Jesus offers her a comforting revelation: from the moment of his conception he was engendering forgiveness. When Jerusalem sees Joseph forgiving and embracing his pregnant fiancée (embodying ‘Jehovah’s Salvation . . . the continual forgiveness of sins’ (J61:23)), she becomes one with Mary. (It is sometimes difficult to know whether Jerusalem or Mary is speaking.) Mary, singing, flows into Joseph like streams of water, singing that she is both ‘Jerusalem the lost Adulteress’ and ‘Babylon come up to Jerusalem’; she is like both Jerusalem and Vala (J61:34–5). As Mary gives birth, Jerusalem receives the baby Jesus in her arms. Jesus invites Jerusalem: ‘Repose on me . . . ’, but again she loses sight of the vision of divine forgiveness. Even in her Saviour’s presence she is blighted by Albion’s theology; she is infected with self-loathing, castigating herself as a Magdalene, denigrating Christ’s maternal descent from Naamah and harlotdaughters like Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba.53 In this fragmented state she equates the human body with death, yet she veers back to divine vision, echoing Job 19.26 (and Handel’s Messiah): ‘I know that in my flesh I shall see God.’ She knows she is a mess: ‘Emanations are weak!’ she cries, ‘they know not whence they are’ (J62:4–17). Jesus comforts her and, protectively, he asks her to walk with him as Luvah’s war-clouds stream with blood.

53

Sturrock discusses ‘the illegitimate origin of Christ’ in Jerusalem (1992: 29–31).

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‘All the males’ on earth now conjoin to devour Jerusalem (J69:1–5), an image reminiscent of the cannibalism of Babylon in Revelation 17. Though threatened, enslaved, and devoured, Jerusalem still longs for her children, pining for wandering Reuben. She pines; then she sleeps, protected ‘by the daughters of Beulah’ (J69:45–6). Is her separation from Albion and harrowing descent into the mills ‘only’ an Ulro nightmare? What is at issue here is the nature of reality. In Plate 71, Edenic vision momentarily brightens Jerusalem as luminous ‘Heavenly Canaan’ spreads over dark Albion ‘as the substance is to the shadow’ (J71:1–2). Heavenly Canaan (the state of Eden) is eternally present. It is not a disembodied world of light; it is not merely a dreamworld or a substitute reality. It is the world as it truly is when illuminated by the light of God. On the other hand, Ulro’s empirical reality is but a shadow of Heavenly Canaan, the shadowy world of Plato’s cave. Unfortunately, as the story proceeds, Heavenly Canaan is eclipsed by shadowy Ulro and Generation: the Divine Vision darkens ‘& Jerusalem lies in ruins’ (J71:54). The nations cry for Jerusalem’s return (J72:33–6), but Vala/ Rahab rules and she wants nothing to do with what Jerusalem offers, a world in which forgiveness is a social structuring principle. Chapter Three ends with the reign of Vala’s seven-headed beast, ‘Religion Hid in War’. A double-female is enmeshed in serpentine coils (J75i)—a grim contrast to Jerusalem’s commingling with Vala in the time of love (J28i).

Chapter Four In Chapter Four Jerusalem moves from her lowest points to her final climactic embrace with Albion and all of humanity. The magnificent monologue with which this chapter begins (Plates 78 to 80) presages her movement from despair to exaltation. In it she moves from lamentation to uncannily prophetic vision.54 When the monologue begins, Jerusalem is ‘levell’d with the dust’ (J78:22). Like Christ crucified (J76i), Jerusalem cries: ‘God hath forsaken me!’ (J78:31). She descends with her little ones (and this includes nature, her beloved hills) ‘into the deepest hell’ (J79:1–7). As in Chapter Three she knows she is blighted with the disease of empiricism, crying ‘I melt my soul in reasonings’; lamenting, she wanders throughout Canaan and Britain (J79:3–13). Yet she does not stay trapped in despair; when she remembers ‘the time of love’, her words carry her back to that joy. Blake’s poetry is like ‘Heavenly Canaan’—returning us to a world of forgiveness and peace. 54 Doskow observes that Jerusalem laments ‘as English imperialism replaces Edenic mutuality’ (1982: 143).

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Jerusalem remembers that when Albion is healthy the Thames and Jordan flow together. Jerusalem teaches ships to sing and a global commerce of music resounds (J79:36–52). Beauty, not greed, shapes trade as she and the Lamb of God commingle on their heavenly couch, delighting their little ones. ‘The mellow horn of Jerusalem’s joy’ sounds thanksgivings as people of all nations and races rejoice (J79:44–52). Jerusalem speaks with joy of Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Poland, Turkey, Egypt, Libya, and Ethiopia. But when she turns to America, the land meant to embody her Liberty, her tone turns wrathful for the first time in the poem: And thou, America! I once beheld thee, but now behold no more Thy golden mountains where my Cherubim & Seraphim rejoic’d Together among my little-ones. But now my Altars run with blood, My fires are corrupt, my incense is a cloudy pestilence Of seven diseases . . . once the Four-fold World rejoic’d among The pillars of Jerusalem between my winged Cherubim; But now I am clos’d out from them in the narrow passages Of the valleys of destruction into a dark land of pitch & bitumen From Albion’s tomb afar and from the four-fold wonders of God Shrunk to a narrow doleful form in the dark land of Cabul. (J79:53–63)

America shrinks in Cabul,55 occluding divine vision in a land of ‘pitch & bitumen.’ The Children of Israel also fall into bellicose greed. Jerusalem continues: There is Reuben & Gad & Joseph & Judah & Levi clos’d up In narrow vales. I walk & count the bones of my beloveds Along the Valley of Destruction . . . (J79:64–6)

Vala’s war-lust infects America, Israel, and all the earth. No longer gentle, Jerusalem furiously turns on her shadow, enthroned in Babylon: Tell me, O Vala, thy purposes: tell me wherefore thy shuttles Drop with the gore of the slain; why Euphrates is red with blood? (J79:68–9)

The imperialist theology of chosenness fuels the slaughter of innocents in what is now called Iraq. Blake writes in response to some of the central texts of western civilization, such as the Bible, Shakespeare, Homer, Plato, Boehme,56 and Milton. His Jerusalem questions that civilization’s basic assumptions. Like Milton’s Satan, Boehme’s earthy Adam, Shakespeare’s Lear, Homer’s Achilles, the biblical Israelites, and the imperialist Britons and Americans, Albion craves precedence. He thinks his Emanation exists so that he can ‘pride in chaste beauty’ (J22:17). He cannot bear to let her be with Jesus. Blake saw that 55 56

‘Cabul’ can be spelt ‘Kabul’. Hegel considered Boehme the father of German philosophy (Stoudt 1957: 20).

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Albion’s imperialism could infect others. He saw the violence which blighted the Israelites destroying America, though it seeks to embody Jerusalem’s liberty. The peace of Jerusalem threatens imperialist power, and Vala, the virgin war-whore, declares that Jerusalem’s erotic body shall be made ‘repugnant to the Lamb’ (J80:65), assaulting Jerusalem’s heart with threads of envy (J82:53–4). Like Christ, ‘Jerusalem hungers in the desart’ in Plate 83; like John’s Sun-Woman, she fears for her offspring. In Albion’s materialist world, she is wingless and trapped (J83:7–8). Yet as Albion’s daughters lament her ruin, Los sees her heavenly form ‘Wing’d with Six Wings’, angelmorphic, ‘descending out of Heaven’ within Albion’s ‘opacous bosom’ (J86:1–19). She is immanent and transcendent. Her ruby feathers canopy Albion, the Israelites, and the Canaanites (J86:9–29). Within her translucent bosom, Los sees ‘the River of Life & Tree of Life’. In the fire and cloud of her lovely loins, perennial enemies can dwell in peace. As Los hurls his hammer in ‘eternal Forgiveness’, Jerusalem takes Vala’s cup of wrath; she takes on sin (J88:49–58) and a great dragon appears. Then we hear that Jerusalem is in its ‘devouring stomach’ (J89:42), digested by ‘Religion Hid in War’ (J89:52–3). But she is not destroyed; she rises like Christ. She rises in Plate 92’s design, clad in her Sun-Woman gown, rising above four wormy heads.57 She rises beyond spectrous reasoning, as the naked Emanation in Plate 93 rises from the tomb to appear on Albion’s bosom in Plate 94. Like Christ, Jerusalem passes through ruin to life. After Jerusalem enters the Druid dragon stomach, Vala can be reincorporated into the Divine Body. The composite Emanation (Jerusalem/Vala) reappears as ‘England who is Brittannia’ (J95:21). When Albion sees Jesus, he calls in love to the Jerusalem he banished. He calls like the bridegroom in the Song of Solomon (2.13): ‘Awake Jerusalem and come away!’ (J97:4). All things emanate and the Emanations ‘are named Jerusalem’ (J99). Jerusalem’s forgiveness recreates individuals, societies, and the cosmos. Even tree, metal, earth, and ‘the all wondrous Serpent’ rejoice in the Divine Body in Jerusalem’s name (J98–9). No one is excluded. Jerusalem’s forgiveness goes beyond good and evil. Her beauty changes assumptions about territory, inclusion, and wealth. Conflict can be creative and difference can make harmony, as it does when Canaanites and Israelites join with Tyre, Assyria, and Egypt to enjoy her music and her peace (J86:26–33). Building Jerusalem is not about vanquishing enemies, but about creative disagreement, caring for others and rejoicing in the beauty of creation. She connects Albion and all humanity to ‘Jesus the Christ’ (J38:20), who is the cosmic Divine Body as well as a character within the poem.

57

I discuss different interpretations of this plate in Part II.

4 Jerusalem’s Jesus Jesus is a character integral to the drama of Jerusalem, but he is not confined by place or time. He is within every character and every creature (including Blake’s readers)—and he contains us all. Like his consort Jerusalem, he brings and embodies forgiveness; like her, Blake’s Jesus is a context (the body where we live) and a way of being (the love through which we create and relate)—as well as a multifaceted incarnate character. He is creative, erotic, fiery, and kind. This chapter discusses how Jesus appears and functions in Jerusalem, and how biblical, theological, and poetic sources—the New Testament, the Moravian Church, Swedenborg, Boehme, Milton, and Edward Young’s Night Thoughts—help to illuminate his character.

NATU RE AND F UNCTION Blake says he is writing Jerusalem to open our ‘immortal Eyes’ so that we may be ‘ever expanding’ in ‘the Bosom of God’ (J5:18–20). He is writing to lead us into Jesus, ‘the Saviour’s Kingdom, the Divine Body’ (J3). When we enter into that character, that place, and that way of being, the human is not separate from the divine. Blake’s Jesus wants us to see that we are divine members of his divine body; we are called to see that we, like the Eternals, coinhere with him. Like Jerusalem, Blake’s Jesus is motivated by a ‘Spirit’ of ‘continual forgiveness of Sin’ (J3). This character wants us each to be with him, a motivation Blake articulated in one of the first books he engraved, There is No Natural Religion (1788), which culminates with the aphorism: ‘Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is’ (K98).1 In Ulro, Albion is incapable of seeing that God could be as we are. He chooses not to see his Saviour, streaming in the sun, singing a song of coinherence and forgiveness (J4). The beauty and love of Blake’s Jesus, like 1 This is reminiscent of Athanasius, but we cannot tell whether Blake was directly influenced by him.

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that of Jerusalem, cannot be quantified or empirically proven. He is not a predictable character; he can appear in many ways—because he dwells with and in all things (he could be called ‘panentheistic’).2 Jerusalem’s Jesus is both entirely comprehensive and infinitely specific. And, as Blake said to Crabb Robinson: ‘so am I and so are you . . . divine members of a Divine Body’ (BR420–1). Like every living thing, Blake’s Jesus is both spiritual and substantial. Jesus the Divine Body is also called the Divine Vision and the Human Imagination. This has caused some readers (like Raine)3 to think that Blake presents ‘Jesus the Imagination . . . not a human person who was or is a god’ (Raine 1968: II.189). Those who think of Blake’s characters as ‘mental relationships, dispositions of the world, or psychological diagrams’ (Davies 1948: 112–15) do not notice that the Divine Body has a body, that Jesus, the Spirit of continual forgiveness, is not only transcendent, singing in sunbeams (J4), shining as a silent sun (J29), creating Eve from Adam in a swirling wave of flame (J35i)— he also has a human form (J29):4 born of a woman named Mary (J60), he suffers with those who suffer (J25:7), makes love to his bride (J20, 79), and works with his divine hands, building a couch, albeit a cosmic one (J48). Jesus permeates Jerusalem, though he has fewer lines than Los, Albion, Vala, Jerusalem, or the Spectre, the other main characters. Jesus and his ideas are at the heart of the prefaces to every chapter; he instigates the poem, and he is where the poem leads. He can appear as an individual; he can appear with and in different choruses: the Eternals, the Divine Family, the Cathedral cities. He can be identified with Los, with Luvah, and with every living thing. He is the incarnation of the ultimate state of being; in Eden/Eternity we enter into Jesus, the Divine Body. Throughout the poem we learn about him (from the narrator and the characters), we see him in Blake’s illuminations (both overtly and implicitly); in Blake’s words he sings, he speaks, he orchestrates space and time.

J E S U S ’S F IRST APPEARANCES Jesus is especially important in the first plates of the poem: the frontispiece, the preface, and the opening scene.

2 In panentheism all the world is in God. By contrast, Rose discusses Blake’s ‘seeming pantheism’ (1985: 406). In ‘pantheism’ all (pan) the world is God (theos). 3 I take issue with Raine’s theology in my Introduction. 4 Hagstrum observes that Blake ‘echoes, amplifies, and revises the resounding scriptural utterances about Jesus’ body’ (1973: 130, 143).

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The Frontispiece (J1) Jerusalem begins with the image of a (possibly androgynous) man entering a dark doorway carrying a translucent globe of fire/light (J1), an image that may allude to Mantegna’s ‘Harrowing of Hell’,5 in which Christ (freshly crucified) enters a similar dark doorway to open the way to heaven and liberate the dead. Jerusalem’s light-bearing Christ figure is generally identified as Los and/or Blake, laboring to liberate humanity from the state called Ulro/Satan. The figure can also be seen as the reader, entering into the unknown world of the poem. In that imaginative world we shall learn that we (the readers), Los, and/ or Blake are not separate from Jesus; for when we and Albion, climactically, see Jesus incarnate in Los, all living things are liberated from Ulro’s ‘Sleep of Death’ (J96–9), the hell within and around Albion through most of the poem. We, Los, Blake, and Jesus are (implicitly) coinherent in the very first plate of Jerusalem. All together we can open the way to heaven (Eden/Eternity).

The Preface (J3) In the preface (J3) we learn that ‘Heaven, Earth, and Hell henceforth shall live in harmony’: in a kingdom of forgiveness, hell is not eternally punitive. Suffering can transform; what looks ferocious can be kind. Heaven and hell are part of one whole, as are the fiery God who spoke on Sinai, and Jesus the kind ‘friend of Sinners’. They speak together; they are One (along with all living things). Jesus/ Jehovah seeks to fill humanity with a ‘Spirit’ of ‘continual forgiveness of sin’. ‘The Friend of Sinners’ is a character with whom Blake can converse as he would converse with a man. In fact, it is Jesus ‘the Friend of Sinners’ who is dictating the entire poem and this is made clear in plate 4, when the action begins. His Kingdom (the Human Imagination, the Divine Body) is within and around us.

Scene One (J4) The words   ı (monos o Iesous), ‘Jesus alone’ or ‘only Jesus’, hover in a cloud at the top of the plate. Blake tells us that Jesus is ‘dictating the words of this mild song’ (J4:5); in a way ‘Jesus alone’ or ‘only Jesus’ is speaking the whole poem. He is speaking through the voice of many fluid characters—and each of these characters is ultimately ‘a Divine Member’ of his Divine Body (J91:31), sensually transfigured in the bliss of forgiveness. Paley (P135) notes that the Greek phrase could refer to the moment in the Transfiguration when

5

A linkage Paley suggests in The Continuing City (1983: 14–15).

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Christ’s disciples (after being dazzled by his glorification) see Jesus alone (Matt.17.8; Mark 9.8; Luke 9.36). It might also allude to the moment when the accusers of the woman taken in adultery do not stone her; they leave her with Jesus alone (John 8.9): she is forgiven. A covenant of forgiveness is what Jesus offers in Jerusalem, culminating in the transfiguration of every living thing. Both flesh and spirit are changed when Albion (who is humanity) awakens from his sleep of death to life in the Divine Body. Our first scene begins with the phrase ‘Of the Sleep of Ulro!’, a phrase reminiscent of the opening of Paradise Lost, ‘Of man’s first disobedience . . . ’, and thus also of Virgil’s Aeneid, ‘Of arms and the man I sing . . . ’. As we travel through the poem we learn that Blake’s Jesus delivers us both from the patriarchal god of Paradise Lost who demands mechanistic obedience from mankind, and from the addiction to war and victory celebrated by what Blake (in Milton, an earlier poem) calls ‘the silly Greek & Latin slaves of the sword’ (M1 K480). ‘The glory of Christianity’, Blake proclaims in his preface to Jerusalem’s third chapter, ‘is to conquer by forgiveness’ (J52). He often reshapes biblical phrases and imagery to achieve that glory. Blake calls the Bible his ‘great Code of Art’ (K777); it is his favourite book (K794)6 and he alludes to it effortlessly. He may not be referring consciously to particular biblical or poetic books when his characters speak (as we may not know that ‘a labour of love’ comes from 1 Thessalonians 1.3 or ‘all hell broke loose’ from Paradise Lost IV.918).7 However, many (semi-conscious?) mythopoetic allusions animate Blake’s characters—and would help us to make performance choices if we were staging them. Jesus first appears to Blake, the first-person narrator, streaming in beams of the sun, in the kind of dawn light or Aurora that enveloped Jacob Boehme when he had his first divine vision. Like John on Patmos (Rev.1.10), Blake is ‘in the Spirit’ when he writes Jerusalem and, like John, he is taking divine dictation. (Blake consciously likens himself to John in his Milton (M40.22 K532) and The Four Zoas (FZ8.601 K356).) John’s Jesus, the apocalyptic victor, appears in glorious clouds and has a voice like a trumpet, but Blake’s Jesus appears in sunbeams of love and sings a ‘mild song’ (J4.4–5). Blake records how Jesus sings to Albion (the Universal Humanity) that we and he should ‘Awake’ and ‘Expand!’. When we expand our senses and thoughts we can see: ‘I am in you and you in me’ (J4:6–7), as the Jesus of John’s Gospel prays that ‘all may be one . . . I in them and thou in me’ (John 17.21–3). He prays that we may abide in one another as the Father abides in the Son and the Son in the Father. This ‘oneness’ for which Jesus prays depends on a willingness to give or dedicate our lives to one another (John 6 In a letter (23 August 1799) he asks: ‘Why is the Bible more Entertaining & Instructive than any other book?’ 7 Thanks to Michael Sommer for this insight (August 2009).

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15.13)—as Los does for Albion throughout the poem. Albion, the British land personified, is sick—for he has banished Jerusalem and it is through her, his Emanation, that he can participate in Divine Vision. When he cannot do so he (the land and humanity) begins to die. Through Jerusalem humanity can dwell in life with the Holy-one (J4.18), the appellation of God in Jewish prayers. As in both the Old and New Testaments, Blake’s Holy-one is ‘not a God afar off ’ (J4.18; Deut.30.11–20; Rom.10.6–8); the God who ‘speaks in thunder and in fire!’ (J3:5) is also ‘a brother and a friend’ (J4.18). The transcendent ‘Holy-one’, streaming in glorious light, also resides within each human breast (J4.19). He is immanent in our hearts (as in Jer.31.33–4; Heb.8.10–12); his kingdom is within us (as in Luke 17.21). ‘Lo! We are One’, Blake’s Jesus/Jehovah, the Holy-one sings, ‘forgiving all Evil, not seeking recompense’ (J4:20). Blake’s God is not (like Milton’s) a god who values justice more than life, a god who damns humanity because of one curious snack. In Blake, if God damns humanity, then God hurts himself, for Blake’s Jesus proclaims that we are all his members.8 We are all divine members of his Divine Body, connected by ‘Fibres of love’ (J4:8). In Eden/Eternity all living things (including you and me) can be creative, erotic, fiery, and kind. We give life to one another and to the world around us, streaming in the sun and walking on the earth.

VISUALIZING JESUS: YOUNG’ S NIGHT THOUGHTS We are interpreting Jerusalem as ‘visionary theatre’; so if you were cast as Jesus (which is, in some sense, the whole point of the poem) you would need to visualize him. Of the many visual images of Jesus Blake drew and painted throughout his lifetime there are only three in Jerusalem. In Plate 35 Jesus, bearing the wounds of crucifixion, hovers in a wave of flame, creating Eve from Adam’s side; in Plate 37 we see him on earth, compassionately cradling a man blue with death; in Plate 76 he hangs on a massive oak tree, emanating light, simultaneously crucified and transfigured. He is the creator, existing outside time and space, as well as a compassionate man whose healing ministry and crucifixion transform death (and/or Selfhood). Jerusalem’s Jesus creates, loves, heals, and suffers in more than one state of being; he can be uncannily dynamic. Blake was considering the many facets of Jesus long before he created Jerusalem. He drew and painted Jesus in many ways9 and I find his illustrations to Edward Young’s Night Thoughts particularly illuminating with respect 8

Milton’s God is a lot like fallen Albion and not at all like Jerusalem’s Jehovah/Jesus. Blake created over eighty paintings of Jesus for Thomas Butts; a book about Blake’s Christology would discuss those paintings in depth, as well as Blake’s ‘Everlasting Gospel’ (K748–60). 9

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to Jerusalem’s Jesus. Those watercolors depict a Jesus who is both cosmic and mundane, commuting between heaven, earth, and hell, transforming death and creating life. Blake spent two years—from 1795 to 1797—studying and illustrating Young’s poem, which was an immensely popular eighteenthcentury work. Boswell praised it, Burke memorized it, and Robespierre had it under his pillow during the revolution (Essick and LaBelle 1975: iii). Night Thoughts resembles what we would call a self-help book, guiding readers through bereavement, Christian triumph and doubt, and climaxing in the ‘great drama’ of apocalypse in Night IX (NT435/IX:17). When chaotic ruin and grief lead to divine glory, angels applaud ‘the mighty Dramatist’ (IX:19); scenes shift and shine (IX:20–1); heavenly harps accompany the music of the spheres (IX:30). ‘This theatre!’ the narrator exclaims: ‘what Eye can take it in?’ (IX:38). The glory of this heavenly theatre outshines human doubt, fear, and grief. By 1795 (when Blake began illustrating Night Thoughts) he and his wife Catherine had suffered much grief. A month after they married (18 August 1782) Blake’s bride lost her mother (buried 22 September 1782). Blake’s father died less than two years later (July 1784), and he lost his beloved brother Robert in 1787. Catherine’s sister Elizabeth died in 1791, followed by Blake’s mother in 1792. In 1794 Catherine’s father died in poverty (BR xxx, xxxiv). William and Catherine, like many of their contemporaries, may have found solace in Young’s poem—as well as in thoughts of Christ. In his Night Thoughts watercolors, Blake explores the multifaceted nature of Jesus. He paints Jesus on earth as well as in heaven: at the wedding in Cana, healing the sick, blessing children, shaping planets, creating life, rising from death, harrowing hell. He depicts Jesus at points where he may only be inferred in the poem. For instance, Blake illustrates the lines ‘to know ourselves diseased is half our cure’ (IX:3) with a woman touching the hem of Christ’s garment.10 And Young’s ‘golden net of providence’ becomes a version of the miraculous draught of fishes where two apostles strain under the weight of a netful of human forms, as Jesus hovers above them (IX:70). Thirdly, as Young’s ‘Proof’ against death in Night VI, Blake paints Jesus rising naked above a crouching figure (who looks like Albion) (VI:42). Though it is the elevated Father God who is repeatedly mentioned throughout Night Thoughts, Blake chooses instead to feature Jesus in at least thirty-five of his watercolors. Grant observes that Blake shifts the ‘paternalist center’ of Young’s divine vision (‘amounting at times to a deification of death’) to ‘a fraternal center in Jesus’ (1990: 84). Kindness eclipses justice when Blake illustrates Young’s words about God the Father, ‘the great Legislator’, with a gentle Jesus blessing little children (VIII:32). Forgiveness is stronger than evil, especially when Blake paints Jesus in hell, liberating Lucifer in a wave of flame (VII:52.3–4). 10

Matt.9:20–2; Mark 5:25–30; Luke 8:43–5.

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Blake’s cosmic or rising Christs are often more interesting (and better executed) than his more sentimental earthly ones,11 perhaps because Blake was particularly interested in depicting his understanding of the ‘raised spiritual body’—of which he had had visionary experience. (When his beloved brother Robert died in 1787 Blake saw his released spirit ascending, ‘clapping its hands for joy’ (BR43–4).12) Jesus is the cosmic creator: he shapes the universe, bowling with heavenly orbs (IX:64), arranging angel-stars (IX:65). This is like his appearance in Jerusalem’s Plate 35, where he creates Eve from Adam’s side in an apocalyptic landscape, a swirling fire-world more usually associated with hell than with paradise. Jesus the creator orchestrates the cosmos and this includes heaven and hell; like Blake he can play with time: creation, resurrection, and apocalypse happen simultaneously. This can be seen in the frontispiece to Volume II of Young’s Night Thoughts. Volume I ends with an image of Jesus rising, trampling down death. Before Volume II begins, Blake hurls his viewers into a space between resurrection and creation; his Jesus, marked with crucifixion, bursts in a beautifully muscled body out of an energy field more elemental than a star, making manifest the creative word: ‘Let there be light’ (Gen.1.3). Shadowy forms stretch beneath layers of darkness in this painting. (‘Is that Satan being harrowed?’, a friend asked me when looking at the original in the British Museum.) Jesus bursts from and transforms layers of darkness, embodying light, and his substantial spiritual body may help us imagine not only how he creates humanity, but also how he streams in sunbeams, transforming Ulro when Jerusalem begins. Like the words Jesus sings (J4:6–19), the Night Thoughts watercolor invites us to look through its layers, to enter into the image. The eyes of Jesus draw in the innocent spectator: ‘They pull you in’, my friend said. ‘It’s quite extraordinary.’13 We are being asked to participate in creation, resurrection, and redemption. This is particularly true in Blake’s design for Young’s ‘Christian Triumph’ (IV:76). Here he paints the resurrected Jesus from behind; we see the marks of the nails in the hands and feet of the risen Christ—and we are facing what he faces. Moreover, Blake includes part of Young’s text within the outline of Christ’s Divine Body: ‘He rose! he rose! he burst the bars of death . . . ’ (IV:76). In the following page (IV:77) the rejoicing continues: ‘humanity triumphant’ participates in resurrection. Since poetry was frequently read aloud or 11 This is true throughout Blake’s work. Hagstrum discusses how Blake’s depictions of ‘gentle Jesus’ contrast with his ‘versions of the superhuman transcendental Jesus (1973: 137–43). 12 Also in Gilchrist (1863: 60). 13 Many thanks to Dr Elizabeth Purves of Christchurch, New Zealand, for visiting the British Museum with me on 16 December 2004. Unfortunately, I can find no reproduction that captures even a hint of how light seems to emanate from beneath darkness in this watercolor, how the energy of the layered yellow and white and gold embodies the muscular Jesus from whose breast light emanates out to the viewer. The tiniest specks of white in the eyes of Jesus pull one into him.

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memorized, the reader of the poem would have become the ‘I’ who rises, mounting with Christ from the tomb, proclaiming: . . . shout earth and heaven! This sum of good to man, whose nature then Took wing and mounted with HIM from the tomb! Then then I rose; then first humanity Triumphant past the crystal ports of light Stupendous guest! . . . man all-immortal hail! Hail, heaven! all-lavish of strange gifts to man! Thine all the glory, man’s the boundless bliss (NT IV:77)

These words were set to music by William Billings in a hymn called Easter, published in Boston in 1787. It quickly became ‘the most widely printed and beloved of all Yankee anthems’ (Crawford 1992: 6). Blake may have known this popular song as well as Young’s poem. There is an echo of this at the end of Jerusalem when Albion, Los, and Blake’s readers join with Jesus, rising triumphant in ‘boundless bliss’, becoming translucent in a state of being that goes beyond ‘the crystal ports of light’ to dwell ‘all-immortal’ in the humandivine Jesus. In his opening song (J4) Jesus lets us know that we are in him and he is in us; he dwells in fallen Albion, furious Los, fiery Luvah, loving Jerusalem, shadowy Vala—and they all dwell in him. Human–divine coinherence was inspiring Blake long before he created Jerusalem.

COINHERENT CONTRARIES In Jerusalem Jesus dwells with and in even the most problematic characters. He not only liberates the oppressed; he liberates the oppressors (Albion and Vala). Perennial enemies (the Canaanites and Israelites) dance together in the peace of Jerusalem (J86); those who are ‘miscall’d’ enemies (J28:20) or ‘infidels’ are incorporate in Jesus, an idea Blake first expresses in ‘The Divine Image’, in his Songs of Innocence (1789). In that poem God dwells in all people and all pray to God: ‘every man, of every clime’ prays to ‘the human form divine’, the ‘Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace’ embodied ‘In heathen, Turk, or Jew’ (K117). As Essick remarks, Blake may have been inspired by the notion of universal brotherhood articulated by Boehme in his Aurora (2008: 50–1). There Boehme proclaims that ‘when the Veil’ obstructing spiritual insights ‘is put away’ you shall see God and in so seeing will know and love ‘all thy Brethren, whether they be Christians, Jews, Turks, or Heathens’ (A11.58). Innocence, of course, is not the same state of being as Experience. In Songs of Experience the human form, ‘A Divine Image’, is filled with Cruelty, Jealousy,

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Terror, and Secrecy (K221)—as God can be jealous, furious, and mysterious throughout the Bible. God makes and is a ‘Lamb’ in Innocence—and a ‘Tyger’ in Experience. Like Boehme, Blake felt God to be filled with contraries. The human form and the divine image are contained within each other: ‘the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul’ exist simultaneously. ‘The Lamb’ of Innocence and ‘The Tyger’ of Experience can help us understand how Jerusalem’s Jesus can be both fiery and kind, coinherent with nature and with humanity. In Songs of Innocence the ‘Little Lamb’ has woolly clothing and eats grass; he becomes a little child, meek and mild, called by the name of God (K115). In the second stanza the child, the woolly lamb, the Lamb of God, and the speaker of the poem (which includes the oral reader) are placed in an I– Thou relationship,14 singing: ‘I a child & thou a lamb / We are called by his name.’ In the creative name of God, nature, humanity, and divinity dwell with and in one another—as they do in the name of Jerusalem at the climax of Blake’s illuminated masterpiece (J99:5). In Jerusalem’s Plate 99 earthy flames envelop Blake’s naked heroine, embracing a Jehovah/Albion figure. In the Bible, God the Father (the Jehovah God) can be fiery, jealous, even destructive—as Albion is through most of Jerusalem. But, as Hagstrum observes (1965), the kindness and forgiveness of the Divine Lamb (the Son) are not divorced from God’s creative and fiery wrath—as is apparent in the famous ‘Tyger’ poem in Experience. That poem presents a series of questions, asking about how the ‘Tyger! burning bright’ was made. ‘Did he who made the Lamb make thee?’, the speaker wonders (K214). Who makes the Tyger? Who makes the Lamb? There can be more than one maker: God, Blake, and the reader all together make Tygers and Lambs—as well as ‘the Song of Jerusalem’ (J99). As Essick notes (2008: 50–1) it is Blake who made ‘the Lamb’ in Innocence—hammering out images and words like the divine blacksmith (prefiguring Los) who also forges ‘The Tyger’. ‘The Tyger’ in Blake’s design, however, does not look at all like the Tyger painted by his words. On occasion ‘The Tyger’ looks positively friendly; in no edition does he seem to be burning and filled with ‘deadly terrors’. The image we make in our minds is ‘The Tyger’ we fear—like the image of a punitive God made by Albion and his fallen sons.15 Of course, the loving and creative God who speaks in thunder in Jerusalem dwells in ‘flames of fierce desire’ (J3:5–6)—but paradoxically, that thundering fire is creative. Creative wrath vivifies the Divine Body; wrath can be incorporate in love. Jesus does not protect us from wrath; he allows us to enter into it, to use it creatively, and to be transformed by it.

14 15

This term was coined by Martin Buber (see my Introduction, p. 7). This god has much in common with the obedience-craving god of Paradise Lost.

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Jerusalem’s loving Jesus not only appears in fire and in the sun; he coinheres with fiery characters: incarnate in Los (J96), he furiously forges in seven fiery furnaces; identified with Luvah (J24:50–8, 65:5–8), he has an apocalyptic wine press (J82) and fiery clouds of blood (J62:28–30). However, the Divine Saviour, the ‘Tygerish’ sun-god, is simultaneously gentle: he can appear in clouds and flames as a shepherd, protecting Albion’s children (J62:5–9); the good shepherd, seeking for his lost sheep in the ‘Furnaces of affliction’ (J96:3–35). Compassionately, he ‘suffers with those that suffer’ (J25:7), but Jerusalem’s Jesus does not suffer gratuitously. Suffering is part of spiritual warfare; it is part of a larger purpose of the transformation that leads to universal joy. Jerusalem’s Jesus can annihilate the state called Satan, which produces a false religion of war and sorrow and punishment. As spiritual warriors we too are called to obliterate ‘the Devils’ of ‘false religion’ with flaming arrows of love and thought (J77). ‘False religion’ is that which does not promote the spirit of ‘Continual Forgiveness’ (J3). These devils of false religion infect the Father-god in Milton’s Paradise Lost, a God who damns humanity for ingratitude and disobedience—and fills us with notions of sin. In his illustrations to Paradise Lost (1816–1820), Blake paints a graceful Jesus (with a beautiful body) who is far more compelling than Milton’s sorry creator. It is Jesus who creates Eve from Adam in Blake’s Paradise Lost illustrations—as he does in Jerusalem’s fiery Plate 35. When Jesus routs Milton’s rebel angels, he does so calmly, shooting a huge arrow of love, like a severe Cupid (c529.7/pl.638, c536.7/pl.651).16 In the original watercolors we can see the shaft of Christ’s arrow coming from the vein in his muscular arm; it has its source in his heart. This warrior Christ is also kind; in another watercolor his calm demeanor comforts the gloomy Father, who looks like Albion in despair as he slumps on his throne (c563.3/pl.647). In these illustrations and in Jerusalem, Blake’s Jesus transforms Milton’s god (as well as humanity) from an addiction to obedience, punishment, and sorrow. In a ‘Spirit’ of ‘Continual Forgiveness’ good and evil do not matter; in fact the very notion of ‘good’ or ‘evil’ empowers Selfhood. The concept of ‘evil’ allows us to dehumanize others, to make ‘enemies’—and hate ourselves. In Jerusalem Jesus wants to deliver Albion from this judgmental binary thinking, an affliction in Ulro which arises from wrong-headed notions about God. At the beginning of Chapter Two (J29) the Saviour appears in the sun to deliver Albion from ‘the Reactor’, the god who forms his ‘Reaction into a Law . . . of Obedience’, compelling Albion ‘to become a Punisher’. This ‘Reactor’ god is a god of vengeance, a god of consequences (J29:6–15). As in Newton’s Laws of Motion, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Every mistake, every omission, every wrong thought or thing, any

16

I am indebted to Barbara Vellacott for this observation (29 September 2004).

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‘Error’ must result in punishment. Forgiveness is not an option. Albion thinks the world must run according to the dictates of this dehumanizing ‘Reactor’ and its inexorable Moral and Natural Law. In this world, nature and people (especially women) are controlled by this Law. But Luvah/Christ’s erotic revolutionary energy can overturn Moral Law; therefore, Albion represses and seeks to destroy that character who is also part of himself. In a word, when he is in Ulro, Albion cannot cope with coinherence and despises ‘Contraries’ (J29:15); he thinks love and wrath, body and soul, men and women, nature and humanity are divided from one another. In Ulro, he and his sons cannot conceive of God within them; they think God must dwell far away, ‘in the dreary Void’ (J23:29). They do not understand that ‘Contraries mutually Exist’ (J17:33). In Ulro, Tygers and Lambs cannot be together—as Lions and Lambs are in Isaiah 11.6 and Plate 9’s illumination. The world of Ulro and Generation is dominated by Moral and Natural Law: ‘Tygers’ eat Lambs; only the strong survive; what threatens Albion is evil and must be obliterated. Fallen man thinks his children must be controlled by ‘Laws of Punishment’ and Moral Virtue. But Jesus works to free humanity from that sick perception.

BEYOND LAW: BLAKE AND ST PAUL Jerusalem’s Jesus has much in common with Paul’s theology of Christ. Both are antinomian; both are a Divine Body as well as an incarnate man; both can change the way we perceive. Indeed, Blake’s theology has been called ‘straight Pauline talk’ (Rose 1985: 406), but I would like to suggest that though Blake affirms and draws upon many Pauline ideas and themes, he also extends the apostle’s antinomianism. Blake’s response to Pauline writings can help us understand more about the nature, motivations, and behavior of Jerusalem’s Jesus. Blake is called to etch his poem as Paul is called to preach the Gospel; both are directed by visions of the resurrected Christ to deliver humanity from deadly Law. ‘The law is the knowledge of sin’, the apostle declares in Romans (3.20), ‘the law worketh wrath’ (4.15). In Corinthians law gives sin its strength (1 Cor.15.56). Similarly, in Jerusalem Moral Law empowers Selfhood. Selfhood and Moral Law hurt the Body of Christ, destroying ‘fibres of love’ and waging war in the name of religion. Christian morality destroys Christ’s Body when it squashes forgiveness and compassion. Moral Law does not heal the sick, feed the hungry, or inspire the wretched. It does not ‘humanise’ (J98:44). It unites the self-righteous by dividing them from others; it negates the spirit of the Gospel. In the preface to Chapter Three, Blake speaks in Paul’s voice. He proclaims: ‘We are men of like passions’ (Acts 14.15); we all require the continual forgiveness of sin (J52).

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In the preface to Chapter Four, Jerusalem’s narrator casts his Christian readers as Pharisees, addressing them as God addressed the apostle on the road to Damascus: ‘Saul, Saul why persecutest thou me?’ (J77; Acts 9.4). Blake’s vision seeks to knock its readers from their tame horses of instruction into the flaming waters of Jerusalem’s River of Life (J86, 97). We learn from ‘a Watcher and a Holy One’ that Jesus died striving against ‘the Wheel of Religion’, against the fiery law called Caiaphas, the laws ‘of sin, of sorrow, and punishment’ (J77). The veil of Moral Law occludes the Divine Body and thrives on sacrifice and war. In Blake, when nations and individuals are freed from constrictive Law, even the most unlikely ones can contribute to life in the Divine Body, an image deriving from Paul’s many-membered body of Christ (Rom.12; 1 Cor.12). As Paul extends salvation beyond the Jewish nation, so Blake asserts that even the most fallen individual or group is part of the Saviour’s body. As Paul calls us to circumcise our hearts (Rom.2.29), so the Divine Vision in Jerusalem lays open the hidden heart (J97:14) and circumcises the ‘husk’ obstructing our interconnectedness (J98:17–20). As in the Pauline letter to the Ephesians, Blake wants us to see with eyes of our hearts (Eph.1.18), and shows how Jesus breaks down the barrier—‘the middle wall of partition’ (Eph.2.14)—that separates the human from the divine. We can be human-divine, unconfined by mundane space and time. The Divine Body is unconfined by space and time, but Albion cannot see this until he awakens in Jerusalem’s final scene. There, he (who is humanity) becomes ‘grounded in love’ (Eph.3.17) and when this happens perception changes. When Albion’s Selfhood is annihilated he can see what is ‘the breadth and depth and height’ (Eph.3.18); he can see that ‘length bredth and height’ obey Divine Vision (J36:56).17 Space and time do not confine us; in the Divine Body all dimensions are orchestrated by the creator (who is among, around, beyond, and within us). Space and time are ingredients with which we weave the ‘Fibres of love’ (J4:8) animating the Body of Christ. Blake does not read Paul’s proclamations about the Body of Christ metaphorically, as some theologians do (Dunn 1998: 269–74, 533–64). He sees the Body ontologically. For Blake this Body, this incarnate Human Divine Imagination, is actually where and how all creatures live. Both micro- and macrocosmic, the Divine Body is the primary reality. In Jerusalem, as in Romans 7, war is being waged between the members of that Body—but Blake’s war differs from Paul’s. Paul says his recalcitrant members are ‘warring against the law of 17 In his commentary on Ephesians, Andrew Lincoln considers the scholarly disarray attending the nature of this ‘breadth and length and depth and height’ for their object is undefined (1990: 208). In Jerusalem, being grounded in love creates intersubjective perception; the object is the subject, which is Jesus, which is where you are. Dimensions become dynamic, not fixed. Objectivity is of secondary importance.

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my mind’ (Rom.7.23). In Blake, the law of the mind banishes Jesus; it is rational and constrictive. The ‘law of the mind’ in Blake confines us in space and time; it promotes Moral Law; it suppresses creative impulses and free love. Blake’s theology upholds and protects feminine free love as Paul’s never would. In his Marriage of Heaven and Hell (c.1790), Blake declares: ‘The nakedness of woman is the work of God’ (MHH8:4 K151). As Blake was creating Jerusalem, he also drafted an unfinished Everlasting Gospel (c.1818), in which Jesus helps Mary Magdalene see that those who regulate chastity ‘render that a lawless thing /on which the soul expands its wing’ (ELG.e.:67– 8 K755). Paul has no interest in women’s wisdom or erotic spirituality: in 1 Corinthians 11.9–10 women must cover their heads lest their hair be an occasion for sin; women must not speak publicly; they are ‘commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law’ (1 Cor.14.34). Blake’s Jesus shatters such notions; in Jerusalem, commands of obedience and familial ‘fibres of dominion’ (J88:13) cause nothing but trouble. In Eden/Eternity there is neither male nor female, bond nor free (as in Gal.3.28); all enjoy the embrace of Jerusalem, the harlot daughter who freely loves her divine bridegroom and speaks with prophetic eloquence (J79). She has been cast out and welcomes the outcast. In her the outcast Hagar about whom Paul writes in Galatians is no longer banished. Blake’s theology casts out no one. In Galatians, Paul creates an allegory from the sexual turmoil surrounding Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar, likening Hagar (the bondwoman) to the covenant on Sinai, and Sarah (Abraham’s wife) with Jerusalem, who is free. ‘This Agar’, Paul says, ‘is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem’. Paul exhorts the Galatians: ‘Cast out the bondwoman and her son’ (Gal.4:23–30). Paley thinks that ‘Blake characteristically wants to redeem the bondwoman through the freewoman’ (1983: 178), but he does not observe that shadowy Vala is like Sarah, the wife adorned with a deadly moral veil. She orders Albion to cast out Jerusalem and her children, as Sarah orders Abraham to banish Hagar and Ishmael. Blake’s Jerusalem, a type of Hagar, wanders in maternal anguish. Like Christ, she innocently suffers degradation and destruction, a victim of the theology of chosenness or ‘election’ infecting Albion and his furious sons (J18:27–8). Blake condemns non-inclusive theology in his annotations to Watson’s 1797 Apology, declaring: ‘That the Jews assumed a right Exclusively to the benefits of God will be a lasting witness against them & the same will it be against Christians’ (K389). Those who are thought to have no rights to the benefits of God may not only be cast out, they can be gratuitously slaughtered. One of Jerusalem’s twenty-seven churches promoting ‘Religion Hid in War’ is named Paul (J75:16). Paul’s theology can be repressive. According to Paul: ‘The body is not for fornication, but for the Lord.’ He asks: ‘shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of an harlot?’ (1 Cor. 6.13–15). Of course, Blake despises prostitution because it denigrates love (ELG e.56–76 K755), but not because it joins harlots to Christ.

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Blake might argue that making a harlot a member of Christ could fill her with love. Jerusalem’s embrace with Jesus is much more than vegetative fornication; it transfigures humanity. In Plate 98 ‘Sexual Threefold’ chariots transport all living creatures to the glorified Divine Body, a spiritual practice nowhere to be found in the Pauline writings. Though Blake’s Jesus liberates us from constricting Law and invites us to be divine members of his body, Blake’s celebration of his erotic spirituality (and the importance of the femininedivine) is definitely not part of the Pauline agenda.

EROTIC SPIRITUALITY Blake’s Jesus is a divine lover, erotically coinherent with Jerusalem (and by extension with every living thing). In Blake, being in the image of God means being erotic as well as creative, compassionate, and fearless. Blake’s ideas about erotic spirituality are influenced by a variety of sources. He may have known about erotic spirituality in the Moravian church; he certainly read and annotated the works of Swedenborg, who wrote a treatise called Conjugial Love. Jerusalem’s heroine lets us know that her Jesus is sexually active. When she remembers and speaks of ‘the time of love’ she is not speaking of a bliss that is merely metaphorical. She flies into the arms of her bridegroom, who makes her his wife (J20:35–41), and they experience ‘holy raptures’ on their heavenly couch in their ‘secret chamber’ in Spain, spreading joy throughout the world (J79). Like the Spirit/Bride in the Book of Revelation, Blake’s Jerusalem is wedded to Jesus, the Lamb of God—but Blake takes us beyond their marriage feast into their bridal chamber. The poem itself climaxes in a nuptial embrace (J99); when Jerusalem embraces Albion/Jehovah, she is also (and again) embracing Jesus—who coinheres with the Father and with humanity.

In the Moravian Church The idea that Jesus dwells with and in each person, especially in moments of erotic ecstasy, was at the heart of the theology of the Moravian church which Blake’s mother attended with her first husband, Thomas Armitage. Blake’s father was her second husband and he was not a Moravian—but she may have infused aspects of the faith that was dear to her into the home where her visionary son was born (in 1757). William Blake’s mother, née Catherine Wright, was a communicant member of the Moravian Church in 1750, as Davies and Schuchard have (2004) carefully substantiated. Catherine Wright from Nottinghamshire married Thomas Armitage from Yorkshire in London in 1746. They were fully communicant

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Moravians in 1750. Thomas died in 1751 and when Catherine married James Blake in 1752 she left the congregation, for communicant members could only marry within the Moravian fellowship. Church leaders arranged marriages.18 Marrying outside the fold would have barred Catherine Blake from communion but she would have been welcome at ‘Singstudes’, the characteristic Moravian service consisting mostly of hymns. Committed to ecumenical understanding, Moravians welcomed worshippers of all denominations but limited communion to full members, for communion was considered ‘a conjugal penetration of our bloody husband’.19 In Moravian theology nothing is secular; everything is done in and for Jesus. This is like Boehme, who believed that when a teacher teaches or a worker works, Christ can be manifest through him (a Christian can be compared to ‘the Axe’ with which Jesus the carpenter hews wood (TCT.I.1.22)). In their erotic spirituality, however, the Moravians differ from Boehme; they are more like Blake: they believe the love of Christ is most fully made manifest in human love-making. The Moravian Church in England grew out of Nicholas Von Zinzendorf’s community in Herrnhut in Germany. In 1722 Zinzendorf welcomed Moravian descendents of Bohemian Brethren to settle on estates (which Boehme may have visited in the seventeenth century).20 These refugees brought with them the writings of their last bishop, Jan Comenius, a Rosicrucian inspired by Boehme’s works.21 His ideas inspired Zinzendorf, who started a worldwide Moravian mission, sending three ‘Moravian messengers’ to Oxford and to London in 1728;22 the fellowship in London helped to inspire the Methodist Church (and may have influenced the Swedenborgians as well). In 1738 four Moravians in London joined with John Wesley and seven members of his ‘Holy Club’. Within six months they had fifty-six members, basing themselves in the Fetter Lane chapel where Wesley had his conversion experience in 1739.23 Wesley left the fellowship in 1740; at that time the Moravians were evangelizing throughout England and the world. Communities emerged in Nottingham and 18

Atwood (1997: 43–4); Davies (2003: 299–300). Podmore (1998: 135) cites the Fulneck Moravian Archives, 11 January 1752. 20 In 1621 Boehme was a guest at Rudolph von Gersdorf ’s manor and Zinzendorf ’s mother was a von Gersdorf (Stoudt 1957: 172, 191). Zinzendorf purchased this estate from his maternal grandmother (Freeman 1999: 289). 21 Comenius was also at Heidelberg when Pareus was lecturing, and wrote a piece of visionary theatre called The Labyrinth of the Whole World. (See Yates 1972: 200–19; Podmore 1998: 6.) In 1624 he made a pilgrimage to Görlitz (Murphy 1995: 14). As a refugee (from the Thirty Years War) he was welcomed at Oxford in 1641 where (with John Dury and Samuel Hartlib) he influenced the formation of the Rosicrucian ‘Invisible College’ at Wadham—from which the Royal Society emerged (Yates 1972: 227–40). 22 Zinzendorf hoped to found a community in the new colony of Georgia and came to London in 1737 to discuss this. Georgia trustees wanted ‘catechists to instruct the negroes . . . ’ (Podmore 1998: 8–28). This project never came to fruition, but the Moravian church grew in other ways. 23 For a description of Wesley’s experience, see Podmore (1992: 1–2). 19

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Yorkshire, and missionaries went to America, Canada, Greenland, and eventually to Africa.24 They sought to spread the love of Jesus worldwide—through music, art, and every aspect of living. Catherine Wright and Thomas Armitage might have known of the Moravians in Nottingham and Yorkshire and been attracted to their services by their beautiful music25—and what I would call their visionary theatre. Every aspect of life in the Moravian community was a sacred performance; there was no separation between the spiritual and the secular. In London, the single, the married, and the widowed not only sang,26 most lived in ‘choirs’ (like the daughters of Beulah or Sons of Albion). Each choir had its own house, adorned with spiritual art. Love feasts included ‘allegorical pictures illuminated from behind’ and one Easter celebration featured a room converted into the tomb of Christ complete with a fountain, hewn rocks, and Count Zinzendorf rapturously placing his hand in the (quasi-vaginal?) side-wound of Jesus (Podmore 1998: 153–7). The Moravian devotion to the side-wound of Jesus, their celebration of Christ’s circumcision, their childlike delight in Jesus, and their sacramental love-making aroused ridicule from less imaginative Christians such as Henry Rimius. His Candid Narrative of the Rise and Progress of the Herrnhutters mocks the Moravians’ love for their ‘little Lamb’ and derides how they kiss and lick Jesus (1753: 43).27 Rimius also condemns Moravian veneration for human sexuality and the feminine-divine. He is horrified by how in ‘sanctifying the Conjugal Act the Representation of the Membrum virile Christi circumcisi is commended’ (1753: 115). Moravian spirituality stresses the humanity of Jesus. Jesus has a penis, and Moravian communicants spoke quite openly about it. Celebrating Christ’s circumcision celebrates his full humanity. Atwood emphasizes that Zinzendorf was not ‘advocating phallus worship’ but affirming divine love. According to Zinzendorf, ‘sexual intercourse . . . is an earthly shadow of the spiritual reality of the soul’s union with God’ (Atwood 1997: 26–36). This is like Los’s proclamation where ‘holy Generation’ is an ‘Image of Regeneration’ (J7.65). Zinzendorf felt that intercourse can be free from lust (Atwood 1997: 34)—as it is in Blake’s Jerusalem when his Jesus embraces the Spirit/Bride who is the mother of us all (J20, 79, 99i). Blake’s Jerusalem is like the Holy Spirit among 24

Podmore (1998: 25-35); also www.moravian.org, accessed 2004, pp. 1–2. In 1748 a principal singer from St Paul’s told Moravians that no music in London was ‘more affecting’ than theirs (Podmore 1998: 152). Benjamin Franklin praised Moravian music in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, ‘the Organ being accompanied with Violins, Hautboys, Flutes, Clarinets, &c.’ (1968: 168). 26 Moravians currently believe ‘the truest language of heart religion is song’ (Zinzendorf: Theology in Song 2004). 27 Blake’s ‘Spring’ and ‘The Lamb’ in Innocence might be influenced by this kissing and licking (Davis and Schuchard 2004: 38, citing Ruth Lowry’s Windows of the Morning (1940: 14–15)). 25

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Moravians (and Southcottians28); she is the Mother of the Church. A Moravian hymn from 1749 proclaims: Mother, Holy Ghost! By that Name thou go’st Thou who in the Son’s whole matter Art the chief Negotiator (Collection 1749: 72).

The Holy Ghost, like Blake’s Jerusalem, inspires all living creatures to mingle in love. Another hymn affirms that even the ‘Chicken blessed’ can also ‘sleep on Jesu’s breast’ (1749: 26).29 All things dwell in Christ, and all human beings can be wedded to him. Zinzendorf’s declaration that all human beings are brides of Christ (since all souls are feminine) outraged detractors like Rimius (1753: 48). A woman’s earthly husband, according to the Moravians, is a proxy of Christ. A man is blessed by this divine resemblance and when a woman makes love she is embracing Jesus (Atwood 1997: 37). Conversely, prayer can be filled with erotic energy. In Jerusalem Albion abhors such notions; stricken with Selfhood, he hates the idea of sharing his bride with Christ. Blake’s mother fervently loved her Saviour and ‘entered into’ a vision of his Divine Body, blissfully sucking his wounds. I quote from her letter in the Moravian archive: . . . I am a pore crature and full of wants but my Dear Saviour will satisfy them all I should be glad if I could allways lay at the Cross full as I do know thanks be to him last Friday at the love feast Our Savour was pleased to make me Suck his wounds and hug the Cross more than Ever and I trust will more and more till my fraile nature can hould no more . . . 30

The daily prayer book she would have used blends Christ’s friendliness with his apocalyptic glory (Liturgy 1749). Resurrection imagery outshines that of suffering, as in Blake’s paintings of the life of Christ. Passages from Revelation appear almost as frequently as Gospel descriptions of Jesus. The emphasis on resurrection may relate to the Moravian affirmation that ‘the Brethren’s Church [was] founded by the Greek’ (Collection 1749: 20),31 where the year centres around and is infused by the Paschal liturgy. In Orthodox liturgy the choir mystically represents the cherubim; the priest dwells in the role of Jesus. Communion is a sacred and dangerous mystery. The Moravian Jesus is a little lamb who can be a consuming fire—like Jesus in Jerusalem. As in Orthodox spirituality, Moravian Christians are called to be deified in Christ—as we are 28 Southcott’s spiritual descendents currently honour the Spirit as Divine Mother. See http:// www.panacea.fsbusines.co.uk/beliefs, accessed 08/10/2009. 29 Also cited in Davies (2003: 291–2). 30 Congregation Diary, V (1751), 80. Also cited in Davies and Schuchard (2004: 40). 31 The Liturgy’s September readings are as celebratory as those in the Orthodox Easter week.

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in Blake’s Eden/Eternity. Eighteenth-century Moravians may have treated conjugal embraces as if they were icons, a vehicle to eternity through which the human meets the divine Jesus. In Jerusalem’s final vision, ‘Sexual threefold’ chariots (J98) lead the body and soul to expand, translucent, becoming human-divine, creating space, creating time.

Swedenborg Blake’s erotic spirituality also has something in common with Swedenborg’s— who attended the Moravian fellowship in 1744.32 Baron Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) was the son of a Lutheran bishop, a member of the Swedish Diet, and Sweden’s Royal Assessor of Mines from 1716 to 1747.33 He had a series of visionary experiences between 1743 and 1745, seeing the glorified Jesus with his spiritual eyes. In his Journal of Dreams he describes the bliss of lying in the bosom of Jesus (1989: 51–4); this may have been influenced by his interest in Moravian spirituality. In his visions Swedenborg visits heaven and learns that all angels are human and that we are called to be angels. We can be glorified in eternity, working and commingling in heavenly hierarchy. (Of course Blake’s angelmorphic beings are non-hierarchical in Eden/Eternity.)

Swedenborg’s Writings The embrace of Blake’s Jesus and Jerusalem is like what Swedenborg calls ‘Conjugial Love’, the spiritual sexuality through which angels are perfected, deriving from the Lord’s ‘marriage of good and truth’ (CL #52, #92).34 Though Blake lambasts Swedenborg in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (K157) and in some of his annotations in the Swedenborg books he owned, he acknowledged to Crabb Robinson that Swedenborg ‘has done much & will do much Good’— though he does not think that Swedenborg is ‘as great as Dante or Boehme . . . ’ (BR423–4).35 Blake’s friend Flaxman remained devoted to Swedenborg’s teachings, though he distanced himself from New Church organizations, probably because of that church’s sectarian squabbling. In 1815 Flaxman 32 For more about Swedenborg and the Moravians in London, see Ankarsjö (2009: 31–2) who discusses Keri Davies’ discovery in the Moravian Church Library and Archive (AB38). 33 Metallurgy was akin to alchemy in 1716. Swedenborg’s colleague August Nordensköld (a delegate to the General Conference Blake attended) received a grant from the Swedish king for alchemical research (Morton Paley, Private Conversation, British Library, 25 July 2005). For more on Nordensköld, see Schuchard (1992: 45). 34 For more about the publication of Conjugial Love and its influence upon Blake’s earlier work, see Rix (2007: 98–103). 35 Robinson’s Diary, 10 December, 1825.

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introduced Blake to Charles Augustus Tulk, an ardent Swedenborgian (Deck 1985: 108, BR326) to whom Blake sold drawings based on some of Swedenborg’s Memorable Relations (BR335). Apparently Blake told Tulk ‘that he had two different states; one in which he liked Swedenborg’s writings and one in which he disliked him’ (Paley 1985: 30).36 Though Blake parodies Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell, his Jerusalem would agree that ‘Love of dominion . . . banishes true conjugal love’, and that ‘conjugal love exists in the inmost heaven’ (HH #380, #382). Swedenborg’s Conjugial Love is set in an apocalyptic framework; he likens his experiences of ‘the Spiritual World’ to St John’s and Ezekiel’s (CL #26). Divinely inspired, he affirms that celestial marriages ‘represent the marriage of the Lord with the church’ embodied in ‘the Virgin Daughter of Jerusalem . . . her cloathing is of wrought gold’ (CL #21). Unlike Boehme’s Sophia or the Southcott Sun-Woman, this bride (like a happy Moravian) participates fully in a spiritual version of sexual love as do all Christians in heaven. There they become angels, wedded in spiritual body to appropriate spouses. As in Jerusalem, masculine and feminine must coinhere; Blake’s Zoas and Emanations, like Swedenborg’s celestials, are essentially interdependent. Marriage far surpasses a state of celibacy in Swedenborg (CL #157), for ‘Love truly Conjugial’ is the finest form of chastity (CL #143). Similarly, in ‘the time of love’, in erotic bliss with Jesus (J20:38–41), Blake’s Jerusalem is as innocent as a virgin—as are ‘the naked infants’ or ‘conjugial’ angels of Swedenborg (CL #137). When Jerusalem embraces Jesus their holy raptures transcend space and time. Swedenborg travels spiritually outside space-time. For him God is a man, but his Human-Divine body, whose bloodstream is love and whose breath is wisdom, does not inhabit physical space. Swedenborg’s Divine Love explains that Jesus, the cosmic God-Man, cannot be apprehended ‘unless Time and Space are removed from the Thought . . . Remove them if you can’ (DLW #155). Blake annotated this book and may have been able to remove spacetime from his intellectual parameters, perceiving ‘Jesus only’—as the Greek epigraph to Jerusalem suggests (J4). Jesus is infinite, eternal, and embodied; like the sea he is ever changing, though he does not change. In sum, Blake’s idea of erotic spirituality draws upon visions of Swedenborg’s cosmic ‘conjugial’ love and may be influenced by the sacramental lovemaking of the church his mother attended. Blake honors Christ’s humanity as fully as his divinity. His Jesus not only exists beyond space and time, he also dwells within it. In Jerusalem (as in the New Testament) he is born of a woman named Mary, he has a healing ministry, he is crucified, and he brings an apocalypse, transforming humanity in a theology of forgiveness. Let us now look at Blake’s interpretation of these biblical incidents.

36

Quoting James Spilling, ‘Blake the Visionary’. New Church Magazine, VI (1887), 210.

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THE BIRTH OF JESUS In Jerusalem the birth of Jesus makes manifest a covenant of forgiveness. Forgiveness is at the heart of erotic spirituality; the birthplace of the Lamb of God, the erotic garden of a woman’s womb, is ‘the point of mutual forgiveness’ between enemies (J7:65–8). In Plate 61 Jesus presents Jerusalem with a vision of Mary, Joseph, and the nativity so that she may see and understand this covenant. When presenting this vision, Jesus is like a cosmic stage manager. To free Jerusalem from Albion’s ‘terror & woe’, he produces a drama (in cooperation with ‘Jehovah Elohim’) in which Jerusalem becomes a character. Joseph appears, furious that the fiancée he thought was a virgin is pregnant. ‘Should I marry an harlot and an adulteress?’, he roars. Mary does not fear him; she hears the voice of God in Joseph’s fury and anticipates ‘the sweets of the Forgiveness of Sins’ (J61:6–12). Then Joseph recalls that he heard the voice of an angel in a dream, revealing ‘the Covenant of Jehovah’ as a covenant of mutual forgiveness: ‘If you forgive one another so shall Jehovah Forgive You’. In that forgiveness God is made manifest and can ‘Dwell among You’ (J61:25–6). This theology of forgiveness precedes the revelation that Mary is ‘with child by the Holy Ghost’ (J61:27). Unfortunately Joseph did not ask the angel what being ‘with child by the Holy Ghost’ means. Excellent critics like Hagstrum (1973: 137), Damon (D264), and Paley (1983: 134), as well as the theologian William Phipps (1971), argue that Jerusalem’s Jesus was not conceived by any supernatural act; Mary was impregnated by an ordinary human man; the Holy Ghost can inspire uninhibited free love. I think these interpretations limit erotic possibility; I think Blake believed that uninhibited free love (or commingling) can happen between human and divine beings. Jerusalem’s Jesus is not only human: he is not what Blake calls ‘a Vegetated Christ’, limited by a mundane human body (J90:34–8). He is a man and a celestial being; as a celestial (and sensuous) ‘Lamb of God’ he makes love to his happy bride (J79). We may speculate that Mary, like Jerusalem, may also have had an erotic encounter with God. In Luke 1.35 Mary is impregnated by ‘the power of the Highest’ and that power could be as sensual as it is spiritual. Was Mary being faithful to her fiancé when she rejoiced in that divine embrace?37 It may be that Joseph must forgive not only Mary, but that which impregnated her; mutual forgiveness may mean that we must forgive God (who is, after all, in each of us). When Mary, forgiven, flows ‘like a River of Many Streams in the arms of Joseph’ (J61:28–9) she sings a song in which Jerusalem joins her. Their voices blend, almost indistinguishably, and as their duet crescendos their bodies lean 37 Was Leda unfaithful to her husband Tyndareus when Zeus came upon her as a swan? Perhaps Blake’s strange swan imagery (J11i, 22i, 71i) reflects conjecturing about human–divine commingling.

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together. Then Jesus is born, coming into Jerusalem’s hands (J61:48–9), an image reminiscent of a Nativity tempera Blake painted in 1799 (c401/ pl.502)38—in which the birth looks more divine than human. In that painting Mary swoons gracefully, her knees decorously closed beneath a diaphanous shift, a posture rendering mundane vaginal birth impossible. Newborn Jesus leaps in a nimbus of white-gold light, defying gravity as he flies towards a midwife (like Jerusalem). Dazzling white light (like that in the transfiguration) holds what looks like a bright cross in the window above the midwife’s head. In Blake’s poem Jerusalem faints ‘over the Cross & Sepulchre’ in the line immediately following her divine lover’s birth, but as she faints, she is comforted by the voice of the risen Jesus: birth, death, and resurrection blend together. Jesus explains that he is born, dies, and rises so that all can participate in the covenant of forgiveness: no one (not even those who reject him) shall be left ‘in the gnawing grave’ (J62:19–21).

HEALING MINISTRY: RAISING ALBION Rejecting Jesus is symptomatic of a disease. Albion is not called evil when he does this; he is sick. Repeatedly we are told that he has a disease, a cancer, a polypus of death.39 ‘Albion is sick!’ the mountains, valleys, and rivers cry. A chorus of cathedral cities wants to help Albion, but Bath (the physician among them) cries: ‘none but the Lamb of God can heal / This dread disease, none but Jesus’ (J45:15–16). Albion is ‘possessed’ by the demon ‘of the War of Blood’ (J50:8) and this kills him; indeed he dies several times in the poem (J24:60, 47.18–48.4, 54:6–7, 94:1–20). His awakening can be likened to the raising of Lazarus (and the many exorcisms Jesus performs40). Thrice in the text Blake refers to the raising of Lazarus. Jesus prefaces the vision of his nativity (discussed above) with comforting words for Jerusalem. As she grieves for the dead Albion, Jesus says: ‘ . . . only believe in me, that I have power to raise from death / Thy brother who sleepeth’ (J60:68–9), paralleling John 11.22–6. Blake again refers to the raising of Lazarus when Erin (like Martha) calls to Jesus: ‘ . . . if thou hadst been here our brother [Albion] had not died!’ (J50:51; John 11.21). In Plate 37 Blake paints Jesus cradling a man (often identified as 38 Online at upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Nativity_by_Blake.jpg., accessed 02/02/2010. He painted a similar scene in his 1815 watercolor for Milton’s ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’(c542.1/pl.666). 39 See J4:13, 9:9, 21:3–10, 32:1, 18:40, 40:1, 42:1, 43:76, 44:32, 45:16, 66:48–80. 40 Six exorcism ‘cases’ are specifically mentioned: Mark 1.21/Luke 4.31 (in Capernaum); Mark 5.1/Matt.8.28/Luke 8.26 (the Gerasene); Matt.9.32 (dumb demoniac); Matt.12.22 (blind and dumb demoniac); Mark 7.26/Matt.15.22 (Syrophoenician girl); Mark 9.17/Matt.17.14/Luke 9.38 (epileptic boy).

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Lazarus) blue with death (or cold) before what looks like a tomb. An aurora of amber-white light emanates from the head of Christ, the healing power that can revive the dead and forgive the forsaken. Additionally, the ‘Lazarus’ scene might allude to the return of the Prodigal Son, who was dead to his father but is alive again (Luke 15). Of course, like Albion, he is not alive again until he repents and freely returns. In the Gospels and in Jerusalem the sick cannot be healed if they reject Jesus—as Albion does throughout the poem. He despises divine vision for it frustrates his imperialist addictions. These sick cravings enmesh him in the cycle of ‘vengeance and enmity’ (J47) which finally kills him. In mercy Jesus takes him in his arms, as he takes the figure in Plate 37, and in mercy Jesus builds Albion a couch of repose from which he may awaken (J48:1–6) to life in the Divine Body. In that Body, Albion is like Jesus, both a unique individual and a dynamic community.

BE Y O N D T H E T R I N I T Y In mainstream Christian theology God is both singular and plural; in the Trinity three divine persons coinhere in one substance.41 In Blake, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit certainly coinhere with another,42 but they also coinhere with universal humanity: trees, animals, rivers, and angels are all part of universal humanity. This includes every living thing, and when universal humanity dwells with God in Eden/Eternity, God becomes not a Trinity but a ‘Quaternity’ (Blake’s ‘fourfold’ man). Like God we are one and we are many—as Jesus is throughout the poem. Jesus appears as a single character (he opens the poem with a solo) but also with, and/or as a chorus: of Eternals, Cathedral Cities, a Divine Family. Additionally, he is one of ‘the seven eyes of God’ and, as we have seen, he is in league with Jehovah Elohim when he produces a vision for the edification of Jerusalem (J61–2). Jehovah Elohim is, like humanity, both one and many. Jehovah is the singular monotheistic Father God; Elohim (the third Hebrew word in Genesis) is in the plural form: ‘gods’. Elohim is God in plurality; being made in the image of God means being both singular and plural, male and female; in Genesis 1.27 ‘God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them’. When reading Jerusalem we should remember that humanity is both differentiated and unified in the image (or Name) of God.43 Our own names reflect this Tertullian (c. AD 200) coined the term ‘Trinity’ in his treatise, On Adversus Praxean. Davies (1948) observes that Blake upholds the doctrine of the Trinity, when calling Jesus ‘the Divine Similitude’ (J38:11) and when acknowledging the Holy Ghost. 43 I stress this point at the beginning of my Introduction. 41 42

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differentiated unity. I am ‘Susanne Sklar’; and that appellation expresses my individuality (Susanne) in the community of a family (Sklar). I am uniquely myself and I am part of a cosmic web of thousands of forbears, as you are. We are each unique—and we are all enmeshed in an infinity of collectives. Jerusalem’s Jesus appears in various ways—as an individual, a divine family, and/or an urban structure. This variety can be disconcerting, especially in Chapter Two. From Plates 37 to 45 Jesus appears as: a singular character, a spirit with and in Los, a Divine Family chorus (which includes the Eternals), and four and twenty cathedral cities joining with the Four Zoas. (The choruses can also exist independently of Jesus.) Let me touch briefly on these multifaceted passages. In Plate 37 Jesus is a singular character and a spirit in and with Los. We see him cradling a man like Lazarus, and we hear Los speaking. Los turns away from Albion in disgust, but, smitten with compassion, ‘again he join[s] the Divine Body’ (J37:11) hoping to help Albion, the fallen man. When Los feels compassion, Jesus is in and with him; compassion is Jesus made manifest. In Plate 38 Jesus appears in ‘the Divine Similitude’ which is the care and love of ‘brothers sisters fathers and friends’ (J38:12), a Divine Family. Jesus, now in the role of the Divine Family, is a chorus of Eternal Human beings expanding and contracting perception (a concept we have already discussed in the Introduction, pp. 4–5). This chorus declares itself to be ‘One Man / Jesus the Christ . . . he in us and we in him’ (J38:19–20). The Eternal members of the Divine Family contain and are contained by Jesus; he is incarnate in their collective. But, as in the previous plate, he is also an individual character. The Divine Family, embodying Jesus, also sees him outside themselves. They proclaim: He is the Good Shepherd, he is the Lord and master He is the shepherd of Albion, he is all in all. (J38:23–4)

Jesus is immanent and transcendent; he is within and around—and beyond— the Divine Family. Again we see that Jesus is one and (at the same time) many. Moreover, the Divine Family, being in and with Jesus, is more than merely human; it can also be an ecclesiastical and urban corporation, twenty-four Cathedral Cities. In the second portion of Plate 38, twenty eight members of the Divine Family, ‘Jesus the Christ’, appear as four and twenty cathedral cities, accompanied by Four Zoas (like the four and twenty elders and the four Living Creatures around the throne in Revelation 4). The cathedral cities weep for fallen Albion—as Jesus wept for Lazarus (John 11.35). Jesus is immanent in their compassion, and the embodied Cities express divine compassion both as individuals and as a collective. Like the human brothers and sisters of the Divine Family (with whom they coinhere) they, too, call upon a transcendent Jesus. Bath has a solo (J45:1–17) in which he cries: ‘O Lord, descend and

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save! . . . Jesus alone can save . . . ’44 A cathedral or community that is not infused with transcendent vision cannot help humanity or heal a diseased political body. In Chapter Three Albion’s political and spiritual disease is so widespread that the Eternals (the angelmorphic Divine Family) consider abandoning him entirely (J55:38). Like Milton’s fallen angels (in Book II of Paradise Lost) they gather into a divine Assembly, debating democratically; but unlike Milton’s angels, Blake’s Eternals are not subject to a leader. Jesus may be their ‘Lord and Master’, but he is within and among them, as they say: Superior, none we know; inferior, none: all equal share Divine Benevolence & joy; for the Eternal Man Walketh among us . . . (J55:7–10)

This Eternal congress then elects the Seven Eyes of God: ‘Lucifer, Molech, Elohim, Shaddai, Pahad, Jehovah, Jesus’ (J55:32). What is called God (Jesus, Jehovah, Elohim, Pahad, Shaddai) is not separate from what is called demonic (Lucifer, Molech). From an Eternal’s perspective the fallen angels, Lucifer and Molech, are part of the divine constellation; they are integral to how God sees. Damon thinks ‘these Eyes represent man’s spiritual development from the completely self-centered Lucifer to Jesus’ (1973: 283–4),45 but I think the eyes also indicate that no one in Eden/Eternity, not even Lucifer or Molech, is excluded from the Divine Body. Like fallen humanity, the fallen angels can be changed, spiritually and sensually.

TRANSFIGURING CRUCIFIXION In Jerusalem the crucifixion is part of the process that transforms (or transfigures) all living things. In Plate 76 we see Jesus crucified; but he emanates glorious light from a glowing muscular body. A nude figure that looks like Los (but is labelled Albion in copies A, C, and F46) spreads his arms in cruciform imitation of the Christ hanging on the giant oak above him. Some scholars

44 Doskow (erroneously) thinks Bath is in ‘Error’ when invoking such heavenly help, for she thinks Blake’s Jesus dwells only within his characters (1982: 18, 90–1). When reading Jerusalem it is important to remember that ‘God is within and without’ (J12:15). 45 And Antonielli (2008: 23–4) discusses how Yeats likened Blake’s ‘Seven Eyes’ to Boehme’s seven fountain spirits and to ‘the seven Olympian spirits of medieval magic’. Yeats also identified the Seven Eyes cosmically and mytho-historically: Lucifer corresponds to the cosmic head; Moloch, to the heart; Elohim is Adam; Shaddai, Pahad, and Jehovah are the gods of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; Jesus reigns when Luther frees us from the Law. 46 Are the labels deliberately or mistakenly deleted in Copy E (P257)?

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think this image satirically depicts a vegetated Christ,47 but I do not see how this image could be satirical. I think it depicts the apocatastasis (or universal restoration) that is at the heart of the poem. Crucifixion in Jerusalem melds with Transfiguration; the body of Jesus and the man beholding him are both changing form. The nude figure beholding Jesus looks like Los, but (if we know copies A, C, or F) he is Albion too. Throughout the poem Albion is aged, storm-torn, asleep, diseased, and/or blind. But here he is a new man. For the first time we see him standing upright; he looks like Los; his virile body resembles the one arising from his recumbent husk in Plate 95. Plate 76 foreshadows the Transfiguration of Albion (J95) which precedes the apocalyptic perception that Jesus is incarnate in Los (J96). He is willing to die and rise for his friend. Together Jesus, Los, and Albion (who is humanity) are transformed and glorified. When Blake paints Christ crucified, he paints Christ glorified; he is like the glorified Christ of John’s Gospel (12.23–8, 17.1–10). This can be seen not only in Jerusalem, but in other Blake paintings, especially the series he created for Thomas Butts (an excellent patron48). In one of them we see Jesus serene, untroubled by his tormentors as he is nailed to the cross (c494/pl. 598).49 In a subsequent painting (c495/pl.571),50 soldiers cast lots for his garments (as they do in all four Gospels) and we see only the back of his tall cross. We see neither the body nor the face of Jesus. Layers of watercolor create a compelling redgold energy (like the beams of love accompanying Jerusalem’s Jesus) at the centre of the cross. That fiery light is more compelling than the greed and military might in the foreground. ‘I am the light of the world’, Jesus proclaims in John 9.5, and Blake seeks to place his characters and viewers in that light. It emanates from another painting of the crucified Jesus comforting his mother and the beloved disciple (c497/pl.600); the white-gold light of his face and body is like that which illuminates Albion in Jerusalem’s crucifixion. This light is like the light of the Transfiguration which changes the face of Jesus and makes his clothing dazzling white (Luke 9.29–31). Blake painted two

47 Paley (P257) cites Lesnick (1970: 399) and Erdman (1974: 355); of course many, like Hagstrum (1989: 218), Mitchell (1978: 210), and Wicksteed (1954: 220) see the image in a positive light. 48 Bentley calls Thomas Butts ‘the perfect patron’, for he not only gave Blake great artistic freedom, he also became his friend (2001: 185–95). From 1799 to 1803 Blake painted fifty-three temperas of biblical subjects for Butts, of which thirty feature Jesus. From 1800 to 1805 Butts bought ninety-three biblical watercolors of which over fifty feature Jesus. As Alderman John Boydell had a Shakespeare gallery (1786–1805) and Blake’s friend Henry Fuseli created a Milton gallery (1798–1799), so Butts seems to have turned his big house at 9 Marlborough Street into a private Blake Bible gallery where he and his family and friends could dwell with over eighty versions of Blake’s Jesus. 49 See this online at: www.william-blake.org/ 105346/The-Crucifixion, accessed 09/03/2010. 50 Also see: www.william-blake.org/The-Soldiers-Casting-Lots-for-Christ’s-Garments,-1800. html, accessed 09/03/2010.

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interpretations of the Transfiguration and in the second (Hervey’s ‘Meditations Among the Tombs’, c.1820) there is no cross on the altar; Christ transfigured, flanked by Moses and Elijah (not Christ crucified), hovers above the sacramental bread and wine (c770/pl.967). As Damon notes, images of love overcoming law constellate around this surprising image (D148); instead of punitive atonement we see forgiveness and glory. We see this also in a crucifixion Blake painted for Paradise Lost (c.1822) where shafts of light emanating from the glowing body of Christ seem to be lifting the cross and drawing Eve from her sleep of death beneath the ground (c537.3/pl.659). Sin, death, and the serpent are all nailed and dead, but the muscular Jesus emanates immortal energy, as he does in Jerusalem’s Plate 76. The light of the beautiful body of Jesus is transformational: Albion, Los, and Blake’s readers can be transfigured by it. Moving from Ulro to Eden is a Transfiguration. In Ulro, Albion is trapped in an ‘opake’ (contracted) body, one that does not interconnect with others in ‘fibres of love’. Through Jesus (incarnate in Los) he moves to Eden/Eternity where ‘there is no limit of translucence’ as the nerves of the eye, nostril, ear, tongue, and body expand ‘in rivers of bliss’ (J98). This image of expanding translucence may derive from Blake’s reading of Boehme. Boehme explains that bodies were ‘rarified and transparent’ (A18.34) before the fall rendered Adam’s body gross and corruptible. But if we ‘enter through Death’ into Christ (TL14.14), if we ‘go through the fire . . . [and] the Cross’ we shall take on ‘the Body of Christ’ and have flesh like ‘an angel in heaven’ (TL24.52). In Blake, Los (working in fire) takes on ‘the Body of Christ’ (J96) and when Albion sees this he too changes. Transfiguration can be contagious. It is also apocalyptic, for it reveals how we are in Eternity.

CREATIVE APOCALYPSE ‘The book of Revelation’, Benjamin Heath Malkin observed when writing about Blake in 1806, ‘seems to have directed him’ (BR567). As we have seen, Jerusalem is filled with apocalyptic (unveiling) imagery. In Jerusalem Jesus rends the veil of Moral Law, cutting away the barrier (or ‘excrementitious husk’ (J98:18)) that prevents us from commingling with one another. As in John’s Apocalypse he is called ‘the Lamb’, marries Jerusalem (a city and a woman), has an entourage of Living Creatures and Four and Twenty attendants, delivers us from the state called ‘Satan’, and establishes ‘the Saviour’s Kingdom’. But unlike Revelation, no one is damned in Jerusalem; Blake’s apocalyptic fires are transformational ‘Fountains of Living Waters’ (J96:36–7). In Blake the apocalypse of Jesus reveals apocatastasis (universal salvation). His covenant of forgiveness goes beyond

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good and evil; it obliterates the concept of ‘enemy’ and delivers us from ‘Religion Hid in War’ (J75:20, 89:53). Jesus, Los, and Jerusalem must contend with the depredations of ‘Religion Hid in War’ throughout the poem. The children of Albion ‘worship Satan under the Name of God’ (J52), murdering Jesus when they promote war in his name. Established Churches, promulgating Albion’s ‘Laws of Moral Virtue’ and ‘war & princedom & victory’ (J4:31–2), animate the harlot-dragon of war (J75) and fill humanity with despair. Jesus, ‘the bright Preacher of Life’, strives against their ‘Wheel of Religion’ and, though it crucifies him, he continues to heal ‘the sick of spiritual disease’, transforming the ‘fiery Law’ of condemnation and totalitarian power to a more beautiful fiery way of living (J77)—in mutual forgiveness and multinational creativity (J79). The culture of peace Jesus brings burns as bright as Blake’s ‘Tyger’; it is not merely meek and mild, like his ‘Lamb.’ Entering the Divine Body involves entering into ferociously creative love. When Los is furiously forging, he is ‘putting on Christ’—as Paul exhorts the Romans to do, costuming them in ‘the armour of light’ (Rom.13.12). Dunn notes that ‘putting on Christ’ is a theatrical metaphor; in the first century an actor ‘put on’ the role he would present (1988: 194).51 ‘Putting on Christ’ in baptism (Gal. 3.27) resembles an actor’s total immersion in a character. As he immerses himself in his divine role, Los exhorts Albion’s fallen sons to do likewise, crying: ‘Behold him here! . . . We shall be united in Jesus!’ (J93:19). When Los is indistinguishable from Jesus he is surrounded by creative fire (J96) and when Albion and his children enter into that transforming fire, bodies and souls are changed in a ‘Glorious, incomprehensible . . . Sun of blood red wrath’ (J98:10–11). What were called enemies in Ulro are brothers in Eden, but brothers need not agree in the elemental Valhalla of peace Jerusalem presents. ‘The soldier who fights for truth calls his enemy his brother’, Los cries, ‘they fight and contend for life & not for eternal death’ (J43:41–2). Those who love one another can fight together and enjoy it. They wage ‘Wars of Love’ (J97:14) seeking, not self-centred victory, but exuberant forgiveness: to create a new world, a cathedral-city, a theatrical production, a compassionate nation. The furious love of Jesus, incarnate in humanity, does not obliterate warriors: it transforms them. As we have seen (pp. 50–1), bellicose Hand forges a war machine, turning ‘the arts of life’ into ‘arts of death’ (J9:1–10, 65:16). Jesus, incarnate in Los, reverses that process; he restores those arts so that every ‘Mental Gift’ can contribute to the ‘Building up of Jerusalem’ (J77). Dunn notes (1988: 194) that ‘Dionysius of Halicarnassus (11.5) attests this use for the first century BCE ‘to put on Tarquin ¼ to play the role of Tarquin’ (citing also LSJ Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940) and Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964–76), 2.320.) 51

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To summarize, Jerusalem’s Jesus brings a covenant of forgiveness to humanity, which includes every living thing. Jesus relates to ‘Universal Humanity’ in a variety of ways: he dwells in and with us; he can be incarnate in a group or an individual; he is human and he is divine. Fiery and kind, he frees us from the constrictions of Moral Law, erotic repression, the concept of ‘enemy’, and space and time, so that we can be divinely creative. We can use space and time as ingredients with which to build new worlds, micro- and macrocosmically. The forgiveness embodied in Jesus can be a psychological and social structuring principle. Blake calls us, not only to play human-divine roles, but to be like set designers and builders as well. The poem is filled with building projects. Let us now consider these projects within the context of Jerusalem’s shifting settings.

5 Shifting Settings—Building Projects Jerusalem’s visionary theatre has visionary settings in which visionary building projects take place. In a way, the whole poem is about constructing Jerusalem in the face of rival building projects. We cannot move through the poem without examining its shifting settings and the nature of those projects. This chapter briefly considers Jerusalem’s interrelating settings before discussing the antecedents and dynamics of the building projects within them. Action takes place both internally (within the body of Albion, Jerusalem, Jesus, or the reader) and externally (in London, the Holy Land, Europe, throughout the earth). Los’s great task is ‘the building of Golgonooza’, a multidimensional temple-city, blighted by Albion’s fallen sons and their rationalist ‘Druid’ agendas. The city of Jerusalem, where all living things build structures of forgiveness, is where we live in imaginative Eden. But in empirical Ulro, Druid structures subvert this woman-city. Jerusalem’s structures and cities are informed by antiquarian texts, Masonic legends and imagery, and the temple-cities in Ezekiel and Revelation. As an apprentice Blake worked with depictions of what were thought to be Druid structures, but unlike many antiquarians and Freemasons, he does not idealize these legendary Britons. Albion’s ‘Druidic’ rationalism does not promote a world view in which people, towns, Eternals, nations, and all living creatures interrelate creatively—as they do in Jerusalem, Blake’s ubiquitous human city.

SHIFTING SETTINGS Jerusalem has many settings and they interrelate in complex ways. Some characters are associated with certain places: Albion sleeps on a rock by a river; Los furiously forges in seven furnaces; the daughters of Albion weave on Cathedron’s looms; Jerusalem wanders in a wilderness. Those places (the looms, the furnaces, the river, the wilderness) are not in a fixed location; they are both external settings and internal (psychological) ones. Furthermore, some places are also characters: Albion is a land, Jerusalem is a city, Luvah is

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France. Characters and places can overlap with and contain one another. For instance, Los’s furnaces are within Albion and Jerusalem can be found therein—as an exhausted slave and a transcendent city (J85–6). People and places are not separate from one another; they interpenetrate in surprising ways. Like his characters, Blake’s visionary settings are not confined by mundane space and time. At least eighteen illuminations depict a fire-world where space is not three dimensional.1 Because of this fluidity it may be helpful to imagine Jerusalem as an animated cartoon. Animation could show how Albion the man affects Albion the land: it could show the character turning into rivers that wither and shrink as he denies Divine Vision (J4–5); it could graphically depict Albion’s Spectre tearing from his loins in the form of Luvah, spreading war throughout Europe, and drenching the heavens with blood (J27, 62); it could show us how Stonehenge turns into Vala’s hermaphrodite dragon (J89:9–22). Animation could give us a sense of the multidimensionality of the creative spaces of Erin and the city of Golgonooza, Los’s great building project. Like Los’s furnaces and Cathedron’s looms, Golgonooza occupies spaces that cannot be mapped easily. When describing Golgonooza, Erin’s Spaces, Cathedron’s looms, Los’s furnaces, and the nature of Jerusalem in Chapter One, Blake (and Los) repeatedly let us know that these places (along with God) are ‘within & without’ (J12:15–20; 13:36). This means the poem’s action takes place internally within its characters (and readers), and externally in a socio-political landscape. That landscape is also unconfined by mundane space and time. Ancient and contemporary Britain overlap with ancient Israel, and this overlapping can occur externally (on the earth or in Blake’s London) and internally (within Albion’s psyche). The overlapping micro- and macrocosmic action of the poem happens in a multitude of settings including: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 1 2

Jesus, the Human Imagination, which is the Divine Body Jerusalem, a city who is a woman Albion, the human interior and British land Golgonooza, a city containing Los’s furnaces and Cathedron’s looms South Molton Street, between 1804 and 1820 London, which is Babylon and Jerusalem Britain/Israel (past, present, and future) The whole earth The universe Heaven, Earth, Hell The reader, entering Jerusalem The text, the physical pages 2 See J5i, 6i, 7i, 20i, 26, 29i, 30i, 35i, 46i, 51, 58i, 59i, 72i, 87i, 93i, 95i, 96i, and 99i. This list could be extended or modified.

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Like Blake’s angelmorphic characters, these places can contain or coinhere with one another. (For example, Jesus dwells in Jerusalem, and he is the Divine Body in which she lives.) To complicate matters even further, the different states of being—rational Ulro, cyclical Generation, erotic Beulah, and imaginative Eden/Eternity— affect how these fluid settings are seen and relate to one another. The way in which a person, place, or thing is seen shapes its perceived identity. In Ulro (where all things must be expressed empirically and that which cannot be measured or proven does not exist) Albion calls Jesus, the Divine Body, a ‘Phantom of the over-heated brain’ (J4:24), but in Eden/Eternity Albion becomes a part of that Body and, like God, he can create space and time (J98:28–31). When Albion can see with ‘fourfold vision’ in Eden/Eternity, the earth, all living creatures, and the cosmos interrelate as one body, one song (J99). After all, in the history of science the cosmos changes when perspectives change (e.g. in response to the discoveries of Galileo or Copernicus)—as Jerusalem’s narrator knows: . . . sometimes the Earth shall roll in the Abyss & sometimes Stand in the Center & sometimes stretch flat in the Expanse According to the will of the lovely Daughters of Albion Sometimes it shall assimilate with mighty Golgonooza (J83:40–3)

The earth has been seen and can be imagined as rolling around the sun (Copernicus) or standing ‘in the Center’ of the universe (Ptolemy) or as a flat disc ‘in the Expanse’ of ocean (in ancient Greece and Mesopotamia). It can also ‘assimilate with mighty Golgonooza’, Los’s great building project. Ideally, Golgonooza (or the earth) is a redemptive space in which all living things can be seen as ‘human’; all creatures are worthy of attention and respect. But, as shall be discussed below, ‘mighty Golgonooza’ (like the vision of Jesus) can be corrupted by Ulro’s reductive vision and the depredations of Selfhood—made manifest by the Druid building projects of Albion’s fallen sons. Those Druid projects obstruct the building of Jerusalem—a body politic in which all things coinhere creatively.

BUILDING PROJECTS Diarmaid MacCulloch3 and J.S. Coolidge (1970: 27–41) observe that Paul’s building metaphor (‘edification’) is integral to English Protestant theology. In 1 Corinthians 14.26 the apostle declares: ‘Let all things be done unto edifying’,

3

Oxford lecture, October 2005.

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an image more fully articulated in Ephesians 2.19–224 where the congregation is ‘built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone in whom all the building coupled together groweth into an holy temple in the Lord’. This church need not be visible,5 as George Herbert’s Temple and Bunyan’s Solomon’s Temple Spiritualised both indicate. Sixteenth-century Protestant theologians stressed that hearing the Word builds up the temple,6 the heart of the New Jerusalem. The Word is both aural and written. Temple building is a way of life. Freemasons aspire to a temple-building lifestyle, as do Jerusalem’s fallible characters. In Blake’s poem all are called to ‘the Building up of Jerusalem’ (J77). Golden builders transform Tyburn, the place of the gallows in London (J27:25–35). Los builds Golgonooza and ‘the Mundane Shell’ (passim) so that Albion may awaken and Jerusalem be restored. Golgonooza’s ‘stones are pity . . . the beams & rafters are forgiveness . . . the floors, humility: the ceilings (sic) devotion’ (J12:30–40). Empirical Urizen also builds a temple-city, but his project is conflated with Druid structures stretching ‘from Stone-henge and London Stone from Cornwall to Cathness’ (J58:45). In Ulro these Druid structures destroy Jerusalem (the ultimate city); they morph into a dragon and consume her (J89:11–43).

DRUID STRUC TU RES Druid structures pervade the poem, creating trouble in at least twenty-three plates7 (yet even they are eventually redeemed). When Albion’s fallen sons forsake Jerusalem, they build Druid temples to worship a trinity called ‘Bacon & Newton & Locke’ and the ‘Goddess Nature’ who is also called Babylon, or Vala. They spread the Druid worship of Reason throughout the earth. Like Elias Ashmole, the seventeenth-century Antiquarian (1652: Prolegomena, A3), and the poet John Milton (1792: 52), Blake assumed that civilization began with the British Druids and spread to Greece and the near-east, but in Blake that diffusion spreads violence. He thinks the Druids’ reputed ‘Natural Religion’, Moral Law, and chastity promote the culture of war and repressive ‘virtue’ which bloats Albion’s Selfhood and hurts the Divine Body. Blake’s Druids are not only ancient Britons; he conflates his legendary ancestors with Israel’s bellicose tribes, Viking warriors, and contemporary Deists.

4 5 6 7

Eighteenth-century readers did not question Paul’s authorship. There is a parallel with Hebrews 9.24. MacCulloch’s Oxford lecture, October 2005. See J17–18, 27, 32–3, 50, 52, 53–4, 57–8, 60–8, 69i, 70i, 78–9, 89, 92, and 93.

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This conflation is particularly apparent in Jerusalem’s Chapter Three where Vala’s bloodthirsty daughters (who have been likened to Valkyries and Norns8) sacrifice children and Hebrew warriors in Deist Druid temples (J63–70), visually depicted as trilithons (as at Stonehenge). Victims burn alive in ‘the Wicker Man of Scandinavia’ while Norse gods (Thor and Friga) dance among Albion’s Druid children, who are also the children of Israel (J63:7–25). Among ‘Patriarchal Pillars & Oak Groves’ they sacrifice innocent victims on altars called London stone (J66:57). Los’s creative work eventually redeems ‘the Patriarch Druid’ (J98:48)—who appears as the triple-headed empirical monster called ‘Bacon & Newton & Locke’ (J50i, J70:4–15). Twenty-first-century readers rarely conflate Druids with Bacon, Newton, and Locke, or Stonehenge with the Wicker Man of Scandinavia. I was puzzled when seeing that Albion’s Druid sons can be Israelite patriarchs (J7–8) and that the dragon devouring Jerusalem is also a Druid building ‘frowning in ridges of stone’ (J89:9–33). But such syncretism was not unusual among the antiquarians for whom Blake and his master worked (see Archaeologia I, II, III)—or among their Masonic neighbors.9 Eighteenth-century Freemasons honored Bacon, Newton, and Locke along with Druid builders, the sons of Noah, who (according to legend) founded their Brotherhood.

Antiquarians, Druids, and Freemasons Blake spent his apprenticeship steeped in antiquarian works and remained interested in antiquarian projects throughout his life.10 His Druid imagery is informed by the works of antiquarians like Jacob Bryant, William Stukeley, William Owen Pughe, Paul Henri Mallet, and poets like Thomas Gray. Most of these conflate cultures (such as the Celtic and Norse, the British and Hebrew). Many believed that all religions come from one source, a source unfortunately corrupted, as Tom Paine observes in his ‘Origin of Freemasonry’ (discussed below). Blake began his apprenticeship with James Basire on August 4, 1772 (BR.12). Apart from some drawing lessons, Blake had had no formal education or training before this time; his first years with Basire were like his first years in ‘school’. His first ‘assignments’ would have included helping with the production of Volume II of the Society of Antiquaries’ Archaeologia (which appeared in 1773). This volume featured British Druid structures as well as

8 For an excellent discussion of the influence of Norse mythology on Blake’s female characters see O’Donoghue (2007). 9 Discussed in Chapter 1, pp. 36–9. 10 This is exemplified by his friendship with William Owen Pughe, discussed in the ‘Joanna Southcott’ section of Chapter 3, pp. 77–8.

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other ‘Blakean’ imagery. Plate IV (Figure 111) in Volume II depicts ‘antient monuments in Penrith churchyard’ including one called ‘the Giants Thumb’. The text likens these pillars to ‘the Druid temple at Little Salkeld near Penrith called Long Meg and her Daughters’, and wonders whether Danish or British Druids constructed these monuments (Lyttleton 1773: 50–2). Plate VI (Figure 2) depicts stone circles, and VII (Figure 3) a trilithon with a sacred stone beneath. Plate XXXIII shows ‘Druidical Remains . . . in Yorkshire’. Plate VIII (Figure 4) features ‘a Stone Hatchet found near Carlisle’ perhaps prefiguring the head of Los’s hammer. The text discusses ‘sacrificial hammers for killing victims’. A response by one Mr. Pegge likens this British antiquity to the Norse, observing ‘the Edda makes mention of the golden Malleus of Thor, which is celebrated as fatal not only to enemies, but to gods and demons’ (1773: 125). William Blake was fourteen or fifteen when encountering these images and ideas. For this volume his master Basire also engraved whimsical ‘morphing’ creatures such as those on ‘The Font at Bridekirk’ where what looks like a two-headed dinosaur with a propeller tail hovers above the baptism of Christ; a headless centaur and flying dog surmount an image of the expulsion from Eden (Figure 5, Plate IX). When illustrating Paul Demidoff’s article about ‘Certain Tartarian Antiquities’, Basire contrasts the luminous underworld of the shining dead with the mundane world of the Tartar people. In the grave a skeletal princess glows bejewelled while a skeletal horse floats underground (Plate XIV). A tiger burns bright atop a box (Figure 6, Plate XVII). Basire also engraved ‘Tartarian Idols’, including a hermaphroditic serpent woman (Figure 7, Plate XVIII); might she be a precursor of Jerusalem’s dragon-harlot (J75i)? In the first years of Blake’s apprenticeship Basire was also commissioned to engrave plates for Jacob Bryant’s three volume A New System, Or, An Analysis of Ancient Mythology (published 1774–1776), and some were probably engraved by Blake under his master’s name.12 In his Descriptive Catalogue (1809) Blake cites Bryant: The antiquities of every nation under Heaven is no less sacred than that of the Jews. They are the same thing, as Jacob Bryant and all antiquaries have proved (K578).

Bryant’s strange New System describes the worldwide dissemination of fallenserpent- and sun-worship after the Flood via ‘Amonian’ culture. He refers to sacrificial temples such as ‘the Dragon’ and ‘a serpent tower’ built by

11

See reproductions of these at the end of this chapter. All reproductions are in boldface. Blake’s contribution was suggested by Russell (1912: 191), upheld by Todd (1946: 31–8), affirmed by Mee (1992: 132) and Bentley (2001: 38). Though Blake’s exposure to Bryant’s work is also discussed by Paley (1970: 28, 64), Mee (1992:132–3), and Whittaker (1999: 115–17), no one has yet commented upon Archaeologia. 12

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descendents of the Amonians, who were themselves descended from Noah’s son Ham and migrated throughout the earth from Shinar (I.424–5). Bryant uses imaginative philology to uphold his notions: On, EON or Aon was another title of the Sun among the Amonians . . . the Coptic Pentateuch renders the city ON by the City of the Sun. Hence it was that Ham, who was worshipped as the Sun, got the name of Amon and Ammon; and was styled Baal-Hamon . . . the Syrians, Cretans, and Canaanites went farther and made a combination of the terms ‘Ab-El-On’ (Pater Deus Sol) . . . hence they formed Abellon and Abelion . . . the Sun was also worshipped under the title Abaddon; which, as we are informed by the Evangelist, was the same as Apollo. (I.17)

Jerusalem’s syncretisms may be influenced by extraordinary ideas like these.13 (We may enjoy speculating that Los, hammering or carrying the sun (J36i, 73i, 97i)14 is akin to one of Bryant’s sun-gods, for his New System explains that ‘Sol’ in reverse refers to sun-worship or sun-gods (I.31–2).) Bryant, however, did not feature Druids in his mythical historic system—as many leading Antiquaries did. As mentioned above, Elias Ashmole believed that Druid wisdom was at the heart of human civilization; he wrote about this before the Antiquaries were formally incorporated. In 1717 they became an official society with William Stukeley (1687–1765) as secretary. Like Ashmole, Stukeley was a Freemason.15 He was also an Anglican clergyman, a physician, and an imaginative amateur artist, ‘entering into’ his vision of the world of the Druids.16 He was a passionate Antiquary and dedicated much of his energy and imagination to the work of the Society. Stukeley’s personal notebooks reveal that under the pseudonym of the ‘Archdruid Chynodax’ he had an imaginary correspondence with Miriam, the sister of Moses who is also Minerva (MSS 10). In his published works he maps Israel onto Britain, likening the structure of his beloved Avebury to Bryant was not the first to use imaginative philology to uphold a cherished theory. Hutton (2009: 65) discusses Thomas Smith, a fellow at Magdalen College Oxford. In 1664 Smith asserted that Abraham had ‘imparted the true religion, not merely to the Druids but to the Brahmins of India . . . buttressing his deductions with quotations printed in the original script of his Greek, Syriac, Hebrew, and Arabic sources—so that fellow experts could check his translations. . . . an example of how a completely erroneous theory . . . can be argued with admirable learning and logic’. 14 Also see the endplate to The Song of Los (Bindman 2000: 201). 15 Stukeley’s diary (6 January 1721) states: ‘I was made a Freemason at the Salutation Tavern in Tavistock Street . . . ’ (Gould 1893: 130). Evans discusses how the eighteenth-century Society of Antiquaries was ‘in close relation with the Grand Lodge of England’ (1954: 186). James Bruce (who discovered the Abyssinian Enoch) and Benjamin Franklin were Antiquaries and Freemasons when Blake was an apprentice. 16 Haycock (2002) gives a good account of Stukeley’s life and his impact on the Society of Antiquaries. Blake could not have been unaware of Stukeley’s works during his apprenticeship. 13

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Solomon’s Temple. He calls a ‘Druid’ monument at Rowldrich ‘the Gilgal of Britain’ (1743: 3–4, 11, 74). He believed that as Christ was partially known to Socrates, so were the Druids imbued with the word of God, worshipping with the ‘true Noachite’ religion (Haycock 2002: 144, 125). Stukeley conflates Druid serpents with the brazen serpent of Moses and thinks that the structure of Avebury (which he sees as a circle spiraling into a winged serpent) prefigures the Trinity. He writes: . . . the circle meant the supreme fountain of all being, the Father; the serpent, the divine emanation from him which was called the Son; the wings imported the other divine emanation from them which was called the Spirit, the anima mundi. (1743: 54)

Avebury, Stonehenge, and other ‘Druid monuments’ are Stukeley’s visionary theatres; they are like pictures into which the spectator should walk (Haycock 2002: 121). Stones are like characters in a giants’ dance, a ‘choir gaur’ (great choir) Stukeley’s alternate name for Stonehenge (1740: 16–17). Stukeley thought that entering into Druid wisdom could make England both a second Rome and the New Jerusalem. The millennium would appear through the science he revered. In his diary Stukeley writes about Newton, whom he knew and venerated: England, in the person of Sir Isaac Newton, was destined by Providence to open the scene. Oh may we not lose the privilege . . . of bringing about the fifth and last great monarchy, with the conversion of the Jews, the Kingdom of Saints, of Grace, of Christ! May we have the honour at least of carrying it into the new world, America.17

Of course Blake’s millennial vision emphatically opposes such empirical ‘Manifest Destiny’.18 He challenges British imperialism and the reverence for Newton promulgated by men like Stukeley. In Blake, Albion’s ‘Self-annihilation’ obliterates the possibility of a second Rome and the tyranny of empirical reason: ‘the Druid Spectre’. However, when the Spectre is annihilated, reason is redeemed; ‘Bacon & Newton & Locke’ join with ‘Shakespear & Milton & Chaucer’ in Eden/Eternity’s fourfold vision (J98:6–10). All things, even Druid stones, participate in ‘the Song of Jerusalem’ (J99:1–6). The poem’s final plate visually quotes Plate IV of Stukeley’s Avebury, conflating its megaliths with Stonehenge’s trilithons;19 Los, an Emanation, and a Zoa stand among those stones to take their ‘curtain call’ (J100). Even Druid stones, drenched with the blood of human victims, can be redeemed from ‘Religion Hid in War’.

17 18 19

Stukeley’s diary (19 March 1741), as cited in Haycock (2002: 120). An American term, popular in the mid-nineteenth century. Todd (1946: 48–9) and P297.

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Blake’s Druids are essentially bloodthirsty. Stukeley glosses over accounts of Druid human sacrifice, but knowledge of such rituals was readily available throughout Blake’s lifetime. Caesar’s Commentaries describe Druids burning victims in their Wicker Man (D447)20 and Camden’s Brittannia (1586) calls British Druids ‘hellish spectres’.21 Though Milton praises Druid wisdom in Areopagitica (1792: 52), he is disgusted by their barbarity and violence in his History of Britain (1695: 60).22 A poem called ‘The Fate of Llewellyn’ (1777) describes the innocent venture of a noble young Welshman into a Druid grove and his sacrificial death at the hands of a merciless priest who turns out to be his father. In his ‘Salisbury Plain’ poems Wordsworth describes victims burnt alive in the Druids’ ‘giant Wicker’23 like the ‘the Wicker Man of Scandinavia’ Blake places among Druid ‘Dragon Temples’ (J47:7). Like Wordsworth, Blake likens the agonies of Druid victims to those who are presently oppressed (Whittaker 1999: 162–3). Additionally, Blake’s Druids promote sexual repression (J63:25) or ‘Ulro Visions of Chastity’ (J55:38), a notion he may have gleaned from Paul Henri Mallet’s Northern Antiquities (1770). (Like the Antiquaries for whom he worked, Blake conflates Druids and Norsemen.) Mallet contrasts the violence of the Vikings with their ‘admirable’ chastity24 and cites Salvia, a fifth-century priest in Marseilles, who called the northerners ‘a cruel nation . . . but worthy to be admired for their continence’ (Mallet 1770: 334).25 Like Blake’s Vala, Scandinavian Frea delights in battle, and like Albion’s sons (J68:64–70), Norse warriors ‘could have no hope to be acceptable to the women but in proportion to the courage and address they had shown in war’ (Mallet 1770: 168). Between 1795 and 1804 Blake illustrated Thomas Gray’s poems, depicting ‘the Fatal Sisters’ (conflated Valkyrie-Norns) weaving ‘many a soldier’s doom’ on their huge loom (Tayler 1971: 6). Similarly, Vala’s chaste daughters weave webs of death (Druid veils) in Jerusalem (J82, 69:38–9). Such grim images of Druids contrast sharply with those idealized by William Owen Pughe (the Southcottian), by many Freemasons, by Stukeley, John Wood of Bath, and Tom Paine. Even Blake’s beloved brother Robert (d. 1787) painted a peaceful Druid grove (cR.4/pl.179) and a benign ceremony (cR.3/pl.1182).26 Idealized Druids resemble Blake’s Urizen, paragons of

20

Citing Caesar’s Commentaries vi, 16. Whittaker (1999: 140), citing Camden: col. xxv. Also see Hutton (2009: 63). 22 Milton says the Romans ‘beate us into some civilitie’. Cited in Whittaker (1999: 140). 23 See Wordsworth’s ‘Adventures on Salisbury Plain’ (1975: 126–7). Also see ‘Guilt and Sorrow’ (1975: 235). 24 It is not known whether Blake owned Northern Antiquities, but it was in Hayley’s library (Munby 1971:#1354). It was widely read (Whittaker 1999: 27–8). 25 Citing Salvia lib. vii. 26 Robert did so while living with William and Catherine at 28 Poland Street. This was a few doors from the King’s Arms Tavern where an ‘Ancient Order of Druids’ was founded on 21

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rationality and reason. As we know, Blake strives to redeem humanity from the worship of reason. Reasonable Druids can be found in the work of Blake’s friend William Owen Pughe. Owen tells us (in his Heroic Elegies) that Druids would believe ‘nothing without examination’ and were open to infinite discovery, supported ‘by reason and evidence’ (1792: lv). Their patriarchal religion is like that ‘of Noah or of Abraham’ (1792: xxvii), and their bards are pacifists dedicated to life, equality, and reason. Like Blake’s Albion, Owen’s idealized Druids revere (quasi-Newtonian) laws of nature which show that for every moral action there is a reaction. Like Stukeley, Owen glosses over the Druids’ ‘bardic idea of human sacrifice’, for he thinks none were killed except ‘voluntary victims or those condemned of crimes . . . a coincidence with divine benevolence’ (1792: lix). In Jerusalem Albion’s Druid sons and chaste daughters (worshipping their ‘Reactor’ god) think they are serving Moral Law—even as they spread war and poverty throughout the earth. Blake’s Druids revere ‘Abstract Reasoning’, and this makes them inhuman. They are not good Druids. The idealized good Druids were supposedly as poetic as they were reasonable. In eighteenth-century poems, masques, and plays they are conflated with bards, living idealized lives.27 John Wood of Bath wrote what he thought was a historical treatise, Choir Guare, in which well-educated Druids honor a goddess. In his imaginative history, Wood suggests that Druid structures at Harptree, Exmore, Stonehenge, and Avebury were actually a network of four colleges for Druid poets, prophets, philosophers, and divines (1747: 8–9). Stukeley praises the Druid sun-goddess, but Wood is more interested in the moon-goddess Diana who ‘appears to have descended to her Altar’ at Stonehenge on important occasions (1747: 100). He imagines her as a Masonic goddess, explaining: ‘Diana did not act the Part of a Mason at Stonehenge only for Pliny assures us she did the same at Ephesus’ (1747: 100–1).28 She is like shadowy Vala, Blake’s Queen of the Night29 worshipped by Albion’s Deist Druid sons. Yet adoring the chaste Queen of Reason is deadly in Jerusalem—as it was in Robespierre’s Paris. When the French enthroned a Goddess of Reason in Notre Dame in 1793, she was the queen of the guillotine. Blake’s acquaintance Tom Paine, who wrote The Age of Reason and narrowly missed being guillotined by Robespierre, believed in good Druids; he thought they were the ancestors of the Freemasons. In his (delightfully unreasonable) treatise, ‘Origin of Freemasonry’ he asserts that contemporary

November 28, 1781 (William’s twenty-fourth birthday) (BR.743–4). For more about the history, rituals, and Masonic affiliations of these Druids, see Hutton (2009: 132–45). 27 For a description of some of these productions, see Hutton (2009: 112–20). 28 For more about Wood’s interest in Masonic symbolism, Druids, and Pythagoras, see Hutton (2009: 102–5). 29 Did Blake know about Mozart’s The Magic Flute?

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Masonry ‘is the remains of the religion of the Druids’ and suggests that Masonry might be ‘coeval with Creation’ (1805: 831).30 Paine thinks Freemasons exercise the ‘scientific purity and morality’ characteristic ‘of the ancient Druids’, and he declares: ‘In Masonry many of the ceremonies of the Druids are preserved in their original state . . . the sun is . . . the great emblematical ornament.’ Paine tells us that the Druids’ ‘wise, elegant, philosophical religion was opposite to the faith of the gloomy Christian Church’ (1805, 1945 ed.: 833–5). But in Jerusalem Druidic Deism is like the gloomy church: both occlude divine vision—and Blake’s Jesus delivers us from both of these fallen structures. As Albion’s ‘Druid Pillars’ stretch throughout the earth (J27:39) Jesus speaks in the sun, seeking to save Albion’s children from ‘the Reactor’ who demands obedience (J29:6–20). In Chapter Three that Reactor-god ‘constricting into Druid Rocks’ identifies himself as the British Trinity revered by Masons, ‘Bacon & Newton & Locke’, winged with the French prophets of Deism: ‘Voltaire, Rousseau’31 (J54:18–26). Like Freemasons and legendary Druids, Albion’s fallen sons worship Reason. Though Blake opposed the ‘sceptred Reason’ central to Freemasonry, he does not denigrate all of their mythic assumptions. Like Los, Freemasons want to build a world of ‘Friendship and Brotherhood’ (J96:16). Like Albion’s sons, Freemasons enter imaginatively into the building of Jerusalem temples in order to restore Babel, a project outlined in Masonic songs like the ‘Ode in Honour of Nimrod’.32 Jerusalem’s Jesus looks upon Babel as a place of bliss in the time of love. He recalls how Albion’s children ‘stood in innocence & their skiey tent reach’d over Asia / To Nimrod’s Tower, to Ham & Canaan, walking with Mizraim’ (J60:17–18). Nimrod and Mizraim are Noah’s grandsons: Nimrod, the Babel-builder, is revered as a Masonic founder (Mackey 1879: 530); and Masonry includes a Rite of Mizraim (Schuchard 1995: 186, 192). Albion’s children are meant to live in Jehovah’s life-affirming covenant with Noah, who is said to be ‘the founder of the Masonic system of theology’ (Mackey 1879: 532–3). Blake’s vision returns humanity to the Noachite covenant between ‘God and every living creature that is with you for perpetual generations’ (Gen.9.12). All creatures can dwell together in united humanity, speaking one language. In building their temples Masons seek for the word that was lost when Babel fell. In Jerusalem Blake’s characters finally emanate that lost word. Jerusalem is 30

Paine cites the Provincial Grand Master for the County of Kent. (I refer to the 1945 edition; the treatise was written in 1805 and published in 1812.) 31 Bacon, Newton, and Locke may never have been Freemasons, but a Freemason at their Tavern assured me they were (25 January 2005). Locke’s membership was only questioned after 1840. See Calcott (1769: 84–93); Pott (1891); Peterfreund (1998: 58–60). Voltaire was in Lodge Les Neuf Soeurs in France (Hamill and Gilbert 1998: 244). 32 Discourse (1772: 28–9); Anderson (1734: 81).

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a city, a woman, a divine name (J99); that name is creative and inclusive. By contrast, the Masonic word seems to be rational and exclusive, an engineering principle for the elite. Freemasons revere the sacred geometry dear to Urizen who wields the golden compasses Blake would have seen on Great Queen Street when he was an apprentice. We have seen that the eccentric imagery surrounding Blake when he was a young man influenced the mythopoetic system of Jerusalem. Blake is (to quote an old saying) as level as a pan of milk when compared to the Antiquaries and their Druids or the Freemasons and their building projects. However, those peculiar projects can help us understand the Druid structures and stones in Jerusalem. Additionally, Urizen builds a temple; Los builds Golgonooza; and all are called to ‘build up’ Jersusalem.

Urizen’s Temple In Plate 58 Urizen appears as the (quasi-Masonic?) great architect of the universe, building a temple of ‘Rational Philosophy and Mathematic Demonstration’ that he thinks will deliver humanity from ‘the intoxications’ of violence. Like Freemasonry’s Tubal-Cain, Los works with the Architect (Urizen) to compel Albion’s furious sons to follow the sun and moon through the porticos of his global building (J58:21–49), but this is not a building dedicated to mutual forgiveness. Initially, however, it sounds like a redemptive templecity, reminiscent of the building project in Ezekiel 47. In Ezekiel’s temple, ‘waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward’ (47.1), and waters rise as the temple is measured, flowing into the desert and healing the land. Israel shall be restored. In Urizen’s temple the Jordan springs under the threshold and the Euphrates runs under the porches, but it spreads far beyond the Levant. Libya and Africa are an ‘Outside staircase’: Within is Asia & Greece, ornamented with exquisite art. Persia & Media are his halls: his inmost hall is Great Tartary China & India & Siberia are his temples for entertainment Poland & Russia & Sweden, his soft retired chambers France & Spain & Italy & Denmark & Holland & Germany Are the temples among his pillars; Britain is Los’s forge America North & South are his baths of living waters . . . (J58:36–43)

Urizen’s ‘Mighty Temple’ is as multinational as the Masonic network sought to be, but it does not restore Britain, Israel, or humanity. Blake tells us that Urizen’s temple is in ‘the Satanic Void’, another name for Ulro (J58:44). It has its origins in Druid structures, ‘From Stonehenge and from London Stone, from Cornwall to Cathness’ (J58:44–6). Urizen’s city is

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not essentially imaginative; it is not filled with compassion. Indeed, in Plate 65 Urizen’s sons leave their Masonic tools, the ‘hammer & chisel & the rule & the compasses’,33 changing their arts of life to arts of death as they worship shadowy Vala (J65:12–16). As they erect Druid rocks of war, Los (in counterpoint) builds Golgonooza—a very imaginative temple city.

GO LG ONOOZA In Jerusalem’s opening scene the narrator stresses the importance of ‘the building of Golgonooza’ (J5:24). Golgonooza is ‘the spiritual fourfold London’ existing ‘Outside of the gates of the Human Heart beneath Beulah’ (J53:16–18). Golgonooza contains Cathedron’s looms and mills, a center called Luban, and it is surrounded by the Mundane Egg or Shell (J13:53–5). This visionary structure has (as we shall see) some affinity with biblical temple visions as well as Norse and Masonic imaginative spaces, but it is very much Blake’s own creation. Golgonooza can be in Ulro with Druid temples, and/or in Eden with Jerusalem. It is a city through which Druid Albion and mundane London can be transformed, but that transformation does not happen easily. Like Los, Golgonooza can generate error as well as truth. Being ‘beneath Beulah’ it is a place of Generation and though its productions can be filled with divine vision, they can also be corrupted by Spectres. When building Golgonooza, Los finally sees the descent of the heavenly Jerusalem ‘wing’d with six wings’ (J86), but for most of the poem Golgonooza is closed-off from that womancity. Like Albion, Golgonooza has opacity problems throughout most of the poem, being frozen and ‘all clos’d up’ (J13:10–16). Like Albion, it can be tainted with fury and fear. Blake did not invent Golgonooza for Jerusalem; it first appears in the Fifth Night of his Four Zoas when Los and Enitharmon engender Orc, a fiery child who fills his father with fear. In fear Los builds ‘Golgonooza on the lake of Udan Adan’, a lake of empty spaces where the death-sweat of Urizen’s victims irrigates the horrid ‘Tree of Mystery’ (FZ8:224–9, K347). In The Four Zoas as well as Jerusalem Golgonooza contains Los’s anvils and furnaces (FZ8:803), as well as Cathedron’s looms (FZ8:30–7, J13:25). Cathedron’s looms (a division of Golgonooza) first appear in the Zoas ‘in Luban’s gate’ where Enitharmon weaves organic ‘Bodies of Vegetation’ (FZ8:36–9). Luban, a place linked with Noah’s Ark in Bryant’s New System (III.21),34 stands ‘in the middle’ of Golgonooza in Jerusalem, surrounded by 33 34

As in the frontispiece to Jachin and Boaz (1790). Mentioned in Raine (1968: I, 232).

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‘a moat of fire’ (J13:24–5) reminiscent of Boehme’s elemental fires—a source of love, life, and wrath. Because Luban is the place from which corporeal life comes, Damon (D253–4) and Paley (1983: 141) both identify it as the vagina. The vagina, ‘the Birthplace of the Lamb’, is likened to an ark in Jerusalem (J68:15) and it is also the ‘point of mutual forgiveness between enemies!’ (J7:65–7). Erotic bliss is integral to the forgiveness that animates the Divine Body but when Golgonooza’s gates are frozen or obstructed erotic joy is repressed and the Divine Body is diminished. Like Los’s furnaces, Cathedron’s life-giving looms can produce destructive creatures and things when overshadowed by ‘the Sleep of Ulro!’. The work in Cathedron’s looms grows grimly industrial as Blake’s visions evolve. In Milton the looms and forges of Golgonooza are ‘nam’d Art & Manufacture by mortal men’ (M24:49). Many scholars think of Golgonooza as an ideal city,35 but Jerusalem’s Golgonooza is associated with: The Looms & Mills & Prisons & Work-houses of Og & Anak, The Amalekite, the Canaanite, the Moabite, the Egyptian, And all that has existed in the space of six thousand years (J13:56–9).

The ‘bright sculptures of Los’s halls’ depict ‘all things acted on Earth’ (J16:61) and as we all sadly know many of those things are not lovely. In Jerusalem’s Chapter Three Cathedron’s looms resemble the dark mills of the industrial revolution. There Beulah’s daughters sing in tears and Jerusalem loses her mind—while Vala’s deadly veil enmeshes Albion and his children (J59–62). Los uses that veil to build the Mundane Shell surrounding Golgonooza, but the toxicity of his building material helps foster ‘Religion Hid in War’ (J75). Redemptive intentions are not always effective—but in fourfold vision (Eden/Eternity) Golgonooza’s inhabitants finally break through the shell of the Mundane Egg. Blake encountered Mundane Eggs when he was a teenager, working with his master on the designs for Bryant’s New System. He may have engraved (or helped to engrave) the Mundane Eggs for Plate IV of Volume II (Figure 8) of that magnum opus. Bryant’s text refers to Mundane Eggs as embodiments of ‘the Queen of Heaven . . . the same as Ashtoroth and Astarte’ (II.342), goddesses who have some affinity with Vala.36 In both Milton (19:15) and Jerusalem (59:12) the Mundane Egg separates Golgonooza from Ulro’s chaos, but it is also a barrier (like Vala’s veil) through which we break. Like most eggs, the Mundane Egg has a Shell. The Mundane Shell is both the membrane of the heavens (a star-spangled biosphere) and the centre of the earth (which is also humanity’s interior). It is both concave and convex. We see how this is so in Milton where the ‘remotest 35

Such as Paley (1983: 136), Doskow (1982: 56), and Ankarsjö (2004: 172–3). As I mentioned in Chapter 1, p. 28, Blake might also have been inspired by Maier’s Atalanta, whose eighth emblem features an egg about to be shattered by an alchemical sword. 36

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bottoms’ of human caverns meet beyond ‘the Mundane Shell in Golgonooza’, where ‘the Fires of Los rage’ (M37:52:57) at the centre of the earth; yet at the same time the blue Mundane Shell is also the sky, ‘a starry harness’ (M21:20–30; J16:25). Blake may have gleaned this notion from Bryant’s strange New System. Its first plate features engravings relating to heavenly caverns—and the text explains: ‘the Greek (khoilos) hollow was often substituted for (Coelus) heaven’ (I.222). The inside (the cavern) and the outside (the heavens) can be interchangeable. In Jerusalem Blake beautifully describes how the material world expands from the hollow of the earth into the starry heaven: The Vegetative Universe opens like a flower from the Earth’s center In which is Eternity. It expands in stars to the Mundane Shell And there it meets Eternity again, both within and without (J13:34–6)

The Mundane Egg/Shell can be beautifully imbued with Eternity. It can hold the heavenly Canaan, where Jerusalem’s children rejoice and shine (J71:1–40). But its twenty-seven heavens also hold ‘Religion Hid in War’ with ‘Self-righteousness conglomerating against the Divine Vision’ forming a ‘Chasmal, Abyssal, Incoherent’ concave earth which is the Mundane Shell (J13:50–5). Like the human form, the Mundane Shell can be opaque in Ulro or translucent in Eden. (In fourfold vision, translucence, opacity, time, and space all vary ‘as the Organs of Perception vary’ (J98:36–8).) Golgonooza is a continuing city because, like its Mundane Shell, it can continually change. It is ‘continually creating, continually decaying desolate’ (J53:19). (Fear not: many good readers find this confusing!) ‘Continually creating’ means playing with space and time. Frye observes that Golgonooza is ‘above time’ (1947: 91); Mitchell thinks that Blake’s ‘poetry is designed to invalidate the idea of objective time, his painting to invalidate the idea of objective space’ (1978: 34). I believe Blake’s composite art does not invalidate space or time; he uses space and time to create new imaginative worlds. The nature of space-time in Golgonooza is almost whimsical and is influenced by various mythopoetic sources. Paley likens Golgonooza’s structure to the four-square architectural plans in Ezekiel, later amended in Newton’s Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms as well as in Richard Brothers’ Description of Jerusalem (1983: 154–9)—but such linkages are only partially illuminating, for Golgonooza creates a reality unconfined by Urizen’s measurable ‘world of Shapes’ (J54:24). Blake had plenty of experience with architectural drawings as an apprentice and young engraver (Paley 1983a: 184–8). He does not draw a plan of Golgonooza because that cannot be done on a page or mapped on a grid.37 In Plate 12 Jerusalem’s narrator describes how Golgonooza is oriented:

37

Damon notes this after making a diagram (D163).

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And the Four Points are thus beheld in Great Eternity: West, the Circumference: South, the Zenith: North, The Nadir: East, the Center, unapproachable for ever (J12:54–6)

I do not usually think of South as an upward Zenith, North as a nadir, or East as a centre, but Freemasons would not find this unsettling. In his Masonic Encyclopaedia Mackey explains that since the sun has its nadir in the north sky, ‘the North is Masonically called a place of darkness’, and he notes that this directional symbolism is found in the rituals of the eighteenth century (1879: 535). The South is the Masonic zenith ‘when the sun is at his meridian height’ (1879: 727), and the east is most holy, being ‘the place of the sun’s daily birth’ (1879: 535). The Masonic west is not, however, ‘the Circumference’, but a place of dark strength ‘that supports the Lodge’ (1879: 876). Blake’s circumference (west) melds with the centre (east). When the human form divine emanates outward, the centre becomes an ever-expanding circumference (J71:8). What is divine within each creature ‘expands in stars’, beyond horizons, infinitely (and sensually) expanding the universe. In Golgonooza cardinal points are sensually embodied; they are not abstractions. Orientation has to do with how we see, taste, touch, smell, and hear: . . . the Eyes are the South, and the Nostrils are the East And the Tongue is the West, and the Ear is the North (J12:59–60)

Golgonooza’s dynamic and sensual cardinal points do not exist as a mathematical construct but as an angelmorphic body—which can fall. In Chapter Three Los’s forge becomes a vegetative body with ‘Animal Lungs’ for bellows, its Furnaces ‘the Stomach for Digestion’ (J53:11–13). This vegetative forge, like Cathedron’s looms, can give form to spectres, but Golgonooza is not always trapped in Generation. In Eternity its cardinal points are . . . the four Faces towards the Four Worlds of Humanity In every Man. Ezekiel saw them by Chebar’s flood. (J12:57–8)

Like Urizen’s temple, Golgonooza is influenced by Ezekiel’s vision—but in Golgonooza the temple-city ultimately melds with Ezekiel’s ‘Living Creatures’ (or Zoas). Ezekiel’s ‘four Faces’ are the faces of Living Creatures (Zoas), four angelmorphic four-sided beings with the face of a man in front, a lion on the right, an ox on the left, and an eagle on the back (Ezek.1.5–10). Ezekiel also sees a four-sided temple city (Ezek.40–3), and that city (like Urizen’s) can be measured. Golgonooza is gated like Ezekiel’s city but it is also quasi-human, like his Zoas. Ezekiel’s four gates open into inner and outer courts; it seems to have eight gates. Golgonooza’s fourfold gates can be seen simultaneously from the four states of being (J13); it appears to have sixteen. These gates, like Ezekiel’s Zoas, have different ‘faces’: the North Gate has four bulls; the South

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Gate has four lions; the West Gate has four cherubim. The fourfold bull, lion, and cherubim are made of different material when they face different states (e.g. they are clay in Ulro, iron in Generation, precious metals in Eden). To complicate matters, the bull (ox), lion, and cherub are not only the faces of Ezekiel’s ‘Living Creatures’, they also symbolize the synoptic Evangelists. However, Golgonooza’s eastern gate is not guarded by the eagle which would symbolize St John.38 Instead, giant wheels hold apocalyptic disasters; what is most visionary has become mechanistic. The wheels of the redemptive gateway to Eden are frozen in eternal ice. Wheels hold stony disease in Beulah and war in Ulro (J13:15–19). Each of the sixteen gates can open into, and includes the others, in Eternity. When they open into each other (in Eden/ Eternity), they become composite human Zoas (lion-bull-cherub-men), as in Ezekiel’s vision. Ultimately ‘cities are men’—every human structure is a divine member of the Divine Body. Additionally, Golgonooza is surrounded by pagan creatures. Genii, gnomes, fairies, and nymphs guard its fourfold gates, creating a micro- and macrocosmic security system (J13:26–30). Blake would have encountered microcosmic nymphs and gnomes in Erasmus Darwin’s Botanic Garden, a book for which he made engravings (BR.40, 59–60). In it Darwin mentions the Rosicrucian doctrine of microcosmic ‘Gnomes, Sylphs, Nymphs, and Salamanders’ as ‘hieroglyphic figures representing the elements’ (1799: xvii).39 In Mallet’s Northern Antiquities four macrocosmic dwarves ‘named South, North, East, and West’ support the vault of heaven which is the skull of the giant Ymer; his body in the abyss is the earth (1770: I.105–7). In his version of the Eddas, Mallet contrasts ‘the black genii’ who live under the earth with the luminous genii dwelling in Alfheim, a city in heaven (1770: II.4). Golgonooza can be luminous or shadowy; it can open into Eden, Beulah, Ulro, and Generation— or heaven, earth, and hell. Ultimately Golgonooza is contained in Jerusalem (J98–9); all living things emanate in her name (J99).

JERUSALEM: THE TRANSFIGURING CITY Jerusalem is a city and a woman. In fourfold vision, rivers, villages, hills, and cities are all human (J71:15). Ontologically a river or town has as distinct an identity as you do in the Saviour’s Kingdom. You can enter into them ‘& when 38 Augustine of Hippo identified the Bull or Ox with St Luke; the Lion with Mark; the Cherub with Matthew; and the Eagle with John in his De consensu evangelistarum 1.6.9. The four faces of Ezekiel’s living creatures typologically prefigure them. But in J13 St John’s eagle becomes the wheels of a great machine. 39 Also cited by Mee (1992: 148).

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you enter into their Bosoms you walk / In Heavens & Earths as in your own bosom you bear your Heaven’ (J71:16–17). This is not just simple personification. Entering into the humanity of villages and hills entails having what the cybernetics pioneer, Gregory Bateson, calls ‘an ecology of mind’ where mind ‘is immanent but not only in the body . . . It is immanent in the total interconnected social system and planetary ecology’ (2000: 467–8). Bateson’s ecology of mind is like an extension of the I–Thou relationship in Martin Buber, where interconnectedness is an essentially human phenomenon. In The Art of Interpretation, Wallace Bacon applies Buber’s insights to a reader’s engagement with literature. ‘Literature has presence’, Bacon writes, and readers can seek to be in ‘full communion with a work of art’ (1979: 35–7). Building Jerusalem in Blake means being in an I–Thou relationship not only with humans and art, but also with cities, rivers, trees, and rocks. Nature, culture, and individuals interconnect. Buildings and cities, like Zoas and Emanations, can be transfigured as they interrelate. (Transfiguration is ‘metamorphosis’ in Greek, a language Blake studied with Hayley.) Blake illustrates his insights about human-cities with a red swan nuzzling the toe of a naked Emanation (J71i). Zeus morphed into a swan, the Word was made flesh, Los is Jesus, Vala is Babylon. A city is a woman, the temple is human-divine. When Jesus erotically enters into Jerusalem’s body, their embrace is a full communion, emanating into every living thing, including rocks and trees. In Eden/Eternity even ‘tree, metal, earth, and stone’ are alive; they participate in ‘the Song of Jerusalem’ (J99). The writer of 1 Peter (2.3–6) compares people to living stones; Jesus is the cornerstone of the temple. We, along with the resources of the earth, are building materials. In Blake ‘tree, metal, earth, and stone’ are as ‘human’ as we are (J98:43–5, 99:1). Of course alchemists believe that metals and elements have personality; Druids believe that trees and stones have power and life, as did some of the Antiquaries for whom Blake engraved. An article in the first volume of their journal (Archaeologia) tells the story of a Druid stone imbued with demonic life. Reverend Dr James Garden recounts: . . . I was told that a poor man . . . having taken a away a stone from one of the neighbouring monuments and put it into his hearth was, by his own relation, troubled with a deal of noise and din about his house in the night time until he carried back the stone unto the place where he found it. (1770: 314–15)

John Wood of Bath describes how ancient Britons saw the deity in Druid stones. The stones ‘delivered Oracles’, he writes, ‘others in the Human and other Shapes moved with the slightest touch; and some cast their Eyes about as tho’ they observ’d the Action of all that approach’d them’ (1747: 99). Like a poem a stone can be, not an inanimate object, but a dramatic presence. When Jerusalem descends (J85–6), she shines with living stones. Many critics note that Blake here draws upon St John’s vision of the descent of the

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New Jerusalem (Rev.21–2),40 but they do not consider how Blake reconfigures this image. In John’s New Jerusalem, the nations of the saved and kings come from throughout the earth to walk in glorious light (Rev.21.24)—as Blake’s Jerusalem walks among all nations and kings. In Revelation they come up to Jerusalem, but Blake’s heroine also moves through them, promoting profitable and aesthetic trade (J24, 79). John is taken by an angel ‘to a great and high mountain’ where he sees ‘the holy Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God’ (Rev.21.10). Los is walking upon mountains as he sings his song (J85:10), but those mountains are also his cavernous furnaces (J85:11, 86:33). He is both within the earth and above it; as Jerusalem is both immanent and transcendent. Echoing John’s city ‘of pure gold . . . garnished with all manner of precious stones’ (Rev.21.18–19), the song of Los produces an angelmorphic Jerusalem, gated with gemstones with ‘Walls of gold & silver’ (J86:23). John’s city ‘lieth foursquare’ (a product of the ‘world of Shapes’) and is later identified with the heavenly bride; Blake’s is ‘the soft reflected Image of the Sleeping Man’ (J85:24), a human city planted and growing like a garden in ‘the bosom of Time & Space’s womb’ (J85:25). She shines from within Albion’s human form divine, an organic and ever-changing temple-city.41 Like the speaker in Coleridge’s Kubla Khan,42 Los builds a city in song—and all who hear can see it there. They can see with the eyes of their hearts. Jerusalem is among those who can see and hear the visionary song. When Los begins to sing she is in his audience, outcast and mourning (J85:14–20). But as she listens in rapt attention (with Vala and the cities of Babel and Shinar) she is revealed resplendent, both within Albion and descending from heaven (J86). Initially Los sees Jerusalem in Albion’s ‘opacous Bosom’ (J86:2). She is ‘Wing’d with six wings’, like a seraph; she has a forehead and shoulders like a woman; and ‘Gates of pearl’ like a heavenly city. Her beautiful wings bend over Albion, billowing like a sky (J86:7–10). Her beautiful bosom, covered with a translucent version of Aaron’s breastplate (Ex.28.15–29),43 holds in it the Tribes of Israel, the Holy Land, ‘the River of Life & Tree of Life’, and ‘the New Jerusalem descending out of heaven’ (J86:18–19). From within those living stones Jerusalem descends in her heavenly form. This is perceptually complex. There are now three Jerusalems onstage. 40 e.g. Sloss and Wallis (1926: 614); S822–3; Bloom, in Erdman (1988: 944); P274; Ankarsjö (2005: 168). 41 Coolidge observes that when the Lord directs prophetic temple-building (as in Jeremiah 1.10) building and planting refer to the same activity (1970: 29). This is so in Plate 83 when Los lets us know that his project involves planting ‘the seeds of Cities & of Villages in the Human bosom’ (J83:55). 42 Blake and Coleridge met, perhaps around 1818 (Bentley 2001: 351; BR.516). 43 S822.

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One is in the audience, listening to Los sing. Another shines, angelmorphic, from within Albion’s bosom, and the third descends out of heaven as the ultimate visionary theatre set, the eternal city. Within this woman-city ‘Reins cover’d with Wings . . . reveal the flames of holiness’. These reins (kidneys or loins) would be uncomfortably crowded if Jerusalem hovered in conventional space, since ‘Israel in her Tents . . . Moab & Ammon & Amalek’ all dwell there. But in Jerusalem’s imaginative space these perennial enemies enjoy the ‘Comforting sounds of love & harmony’ of her silver bells (J86:29–30). There are no territorial disputes. With sandals of gold and pearl Jerusalem’s beauty stretches to ‘Egypt & Assyria . . . The Isles of Javan, Philistea, Tyre, and Lebanon’ (J86:22–32). This luminous image of peace starkly contrasts with that of the dark winged Druid Dragon, digesting Jerusalem in its ‘devouring Stomach’ three plates later (J89:9–55). Like Golgonooza, Jerusalem (a woman and a city) can be in various states or creative spaces: she suffers with the outcast, rises in beauty from Albion, descends in beauty from heaven, and spends time in a dragon’s stomach. This is not unlike Blake’s Jesus who spreads transcendent beams of love in Eternity, is transfigured on earth, copes with Generation in his healing ministry, and must descend into hell to harrow it. Jerusalem proclaims in its first preface: ‘Heaven, earth, and hell shall live in harmony’ (J3). ‘Heaven earth and hell’ can interrelate, as Blake’s shifting settings and angelmorphic characters do. Entering into Jerusalem involves moving, with Blake’s characters, through hellish Ulro, generative earth, sensual Beulah, and heavenly Eden or Eternity. Now that I have discussed the background of Blake’s great poem—its characters, its settings, its imagery, and its poetic and theological antecedents—it is time to move through Blake’s masterpiece, interpreting the story of the poem.

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Part II The Commentary

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Reading the Poem Jerusalem has a plot. Its characters’ overlapping stories create a tale of Albion’s fall and Jerusalem’s banishment (in Chapter One), a series of rescue attempts (in Chapter Two), a chaotic crescendo of violence and war (in Chapter Three), and finally, humanity’s great awakening in Jerusalem, a woman-city embodying forgiveness and liberty (in Chapter Four). As we have seen, many good readers do not find a story in Jerusalem, but that may be because they do not act upon Blake’s operating instructions. In his preface to Jerusalem Blake explicitly states that he has chosen the words of his poem to suit ‘the mouth of a true Orator’ (J3); like many literary works, it is meant to be read aloud. In Blake’s time texts were read aloud in homes, taverns, workshops, drawing rooms, and in the fields. Readers orally interpreted beloved books both in company and alone. Manuals like James Burgh’s Art of Speaking (1768) instructed genteel readers in appropriate interpretative techniques (Brewer 1997: 197–9). Even pamphlets were performative. Paine’s American Crisis was crafted to be read aloud, proclaiming: ‘I bring reason to your ears!’ (Keane 1995: 144), and his Age of Reason assumes that biblical prophets were performers (Paine 1991: 61–62).1 Blake’s prophetic progenitor, John the Divine, may not have been a performer himself but he writes so that ‘he that hath an ear’ may ‘hear what the Spirit saith’ (Rev.2.29). John’s Apocalypse and Blake’s Jerusalem can be better understood when spoken and heard. Both Blake scholars and biblical scholars occasionally comment upon the orality of these complex texts. Essick, grappling with ‘the clutter’ and ‘muddle’ of Jerusalem and its ‘whirlwind of pictorial images’, likens ‘the oral dimension’ of Blake’s ‘psychodrama of being’ to that of Old Testament prophets and the oral-formulaic patterns found in poems like The Iliad and The Odyssey (2003: 251–9). Paley compares the parallelism in Jerusalem’s verse to Lowth’s ideas about Hebrew prosody, and discusses how Blake’s interest in primitive bards (in Ossian or Owen’s Elegies) informs portions of Jerusalem (1983: 42–57).

1

Rhoads (2006) discusses how the Gospels and Epistles were performances.

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New Testament scholars like David Barr (1986) and David Rhoads (2006) stress the importance of orality in studying the Book of Revelation, and both use oral interpretation to illuminate the text in their teaching and writing. Barr observes that giving voice to John’s Apocalypse heightens an awareness of how its many images are patterned in groups of seven (1986: 244–6). David Rhoads writes about performing Revelation as a one-man show at conferences, colleges, and seminars: ‘I enter into the world of the text’, he says, ‘grasp it as a whole, and reveal this world’ (2006: 4). Entering into the world of Jerusalem involves giving voice to its characters, visualizing its settings, and enjoying the dynamic (and somewhat daunting) imagery and language that makes up that world. When Angela Esterhammer discusses Jerusalem’s ‘performative language’, she uses the term as the philosopher J.L. Austin does in his theories about the relationship between speech, action, and perception (2006: 70–7), but it does not occur to her that vocal performance might clarify the complexity of what she calls Blake’s ‘formidable, resistant language full of idiosyncrasies . . . tantalizing but ambiguous allusions . . . lists of unknown and unpronounceable names’ (2006: 65). Needless to say it is difficult to declaim a text intelligently without knowing what its idiosyncratic words mean—but we have discussed many of Blake’s ‘unknown’ names in the first portion of this book. Now we must explore how those names (of characters and places) and Blake’s allusive verbal and visual imagery interrelate in a montage of stories. Every scene and every plate of Jerusalem is like a word and image puzzle, more fascinating and difficult than a good crossword. Blake thought his works should ‘rouze the faculties to act’ (K793). The ‘faculties’ required are both intellectual and imaginative. Critical and creative work enhance one another; both reason and imagination are needed in the building (and the reading) of Jerusalem. As Christopher Burdon (writing about Blake’s theology) observes: ‘It is not detached reflection’, but ‘the actual experience of living, reading, creating, and desiring’ that reveals what Blake’s work is about (2007: 450). Visionary theatre allows us to experience the life of a poem creatively. Visionary theatre can include giving voice to Blake’s text, setting it to music, choreographing passages, designing sets, costumes, and props, or reconfiguring its visual images. Before writing this book I had the pleasure of reading all of Jerusalem aloud, first with nine students from Chicago’s Newberry Library and Shimer College in 2002, and with members of the Blake Society at the Abbey in Sutton Courtenay (near Oxford) in 2004. I also taught the poem at Northwestern University in 2008–2009 and asked my seminar students to do a creative project to help them ‘enter into’ Blake’s poem imaginatively. They gave performances and readings, made collages, costumes, and interactive dioramas, wrote music, created puppet shows and a computer game; they animated Blake’s images and produced a dance-opera video. A few did not read any secondary literature until they were writing their final essays and could not understand how learned professors could call the poem ‘a wall of

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words’ or an ‘anti-form’ whose plot ‘goes nowhere’. To those who are creating projects from within the poem, Blake’s strange words can be whimsical and inspiring, moving the mind from academic Ulro to imaginative Eternity. Of course, Eternity is hard to locate; from a purely rational standpoint Eden/Eternity might look like ‘nowhere’. I would like to suggest that Blake’s poem is a living form whose characters lead us beyond mundane places to a delightful ‘utopia’, a ‘nowhere’ which can be within and all around us. In that delightful way of seeing and being we can understand Blake’s playful imagery and words. Blake’s tantalizing words become comprehensible when they are heard. When I read the poem silently and in isolation I was very confused by it. But when I joined a ‘Divine Family’ of readers and we each gave voice to a character, responding to one another (and sharing the narration) much of Blake’s language and imagery started making sense: the spoken words were transformational. The novelist Philip Pullman (reading Albion at Sutton Courtenay) commented: ‘The flow of the poem was clarified and it came to life in Minute Particulars.’ Francis Gilbert (reading the Eternals) declared: ‘I felt something like a resurrection in myself—and then all the others [in the poem] made sense.’ Different readers and performers make different choices, and these choices in turn illuminate important aspects of the poem. For instance, performance reveals that Jerusalem, Blake’s heroine, cannot be passive or spatially static; she is a multidimensional figure who can be portrayed in various ways. Rebecca Sundin (from Shimer) presented a highly intelligent, even reasonable, Jerusalem; when I read her (at Sutton Courtenay), I explored how her confusion and distress turn into energizing indignation; Allyson Boe (in the Northwestern dance-opera) makes manifest her angelmorphic sensuality. Los, our hero, is also multifaceted: Andrew Vernede (reading Los at Sutton Courtenay) emphasized the prophetic blacksmith’s tenacity, whereas Will Candelario (from Shimer) highlighted his struggles with lust and rage. When reading the Spectre, Tim Heath (from the Blake Society) made him cleverly seductive; P.J. Killian (from Shimer) chose to imitate Peter Lorre, rendering his wickedness hilarious; Julie Milligan (at Northwestern), by miming the Spectre, emphasized his misery and loneliness, inspiring the audience to empathize with him (which can, of course, be dangerous). Each creative interpretation is apocalyptic; it reveals new things about the text. Oral interpretation, in particular, helps to reveal how scenes break and are shaped.2 When reading Jerusalem aloud I become aware that each chapter has internal structure, shaped by the voices of characters who emerge (or even 2 The New Testament, for example, was read aloud for more than a millennium before its chapter and verse divisions were standardized. (For more about the experience of such reading, see Rhoads (2006: 27–9)).

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intrude) to create distinct scenes. The very presence of a reader can be a reminder that scenes happen in counterpoint. (For example, as Tony Eaude (in Sutton Courtenay) read Reuben (J34, 36), his facial expression made me aware that he was desperately seeking Tirzah, while Jesus (read by Christopher Rowland) appeared in another dimension, creating states ‘to deliver Individuals evermore!’ (J35:15–16).) Based on my aural experience of the poem, I have divided each chapter of Jerusalem into scenes and what follows is a scene-by-scene commentary on the whole poem. As I mentioned in my introduction, I am not arguing that Jerusalem is visionary theatre or creating a theory about it; I am using this notion as an approach to the text, an imaginative way of reading that clarifies how characters, settings, imagery, and action interrelate. As I comment upon (and occasionally paraphrase) each scene, I examine both visual designs and verbal imagery, paying particular attention to the importance of forgiveness in Blake’s poem. Through liberating forgiveness, Jerusalem’s characters, author, and readers can move from the miseries of Selfhood to creative life in the Divine Body. Blake calls the Bible his ‘Great Code’ and his biblical allusions often challenge notions like chosenness, morality, righteousness, and atonement. Allusions or parallels to apocalyptic passages (especially in Revelation or Ezekiel) frequently appear, but Blake subverts those allusions when they do not uphold the gospel of forgiveness and transformation embodied in his Jesus and Jerusalem. I also read the text in light of some of Blake’s acknowledged sources, both those he admired (like Boehme, Shakespeare, and Milton) and those with whom he contended (like Swedenborg). I have been guided in producing this commentary both by my gloriously imaginative students, and by many good scholars, particularly Morton Paley, W.H. Stevenson, Christopher Rowland, G.E. Bentley, and Jean Hagstrum. Scholars often differ in their interpretations of key scenes. I mention the insights and debates I find most helpful or intriguing, happily aware that my interpretation is not the only way of reading Blake’s poem. Great pieces of art are interpreted in a variety of ways: Solti and Barenboim interpret Beethoven’s symphonies in their own way; no two actors portray Hamlet identically. Similarly, no two readings of Jerusalem should be identical. I hope that you will question my observations, and that your questions will lead you, too, to enter imaginatively into Blake’s great poem. As you read this commentary it would be helpful to have a facsimile of Copy E before you. Because I approach this work theatrically, I use the terms ‘stage right’ and ‘stage left’ when discussing its visual imagery; this assumes that you are standing, with Blake’s characters, inside the text. The journey into the text, like the journey into Albion’s interior, is both visual and verbal. The human can be reunited with the divine. Forgiveness can structure societies.

1 ‘To the Public’—Albion’s Fall OVERTURE: THE PREFACE (1 – 4 ) The first four plates of Jerusalem lead us into the world of the poem. As has been discussed in ‘Jerusalem’s Jesus’ (Part I, pp. 95–6), the frontispiece presents a figure that may be Los and/or Blake carrying a translucent disc of light as he enters a dark doorway to harrow a hell called Ulro. The shimmering disc is akin to Boehme’s mirror of divine wisdom which holds love and wrath, light and fire (FQ15–17). Its luminous energy is like the light described in the Transfiguration (Matt.17.2; Mark 9.2–8; Luke 9.28–36). Los-Blake is entering a world peopled by angelmorphic creatures: Zoas and Emanations, giants and fairies. Time and space are flexible, and we shall encounter unusually allusive language as we journey through the poem. This poetic pilgrimage involves awakening the Emanation sleeping at the bottom of the title page (J2). As has been mentioned (Part I, pp. 44–7), the Emanation dwells within us and can be a way of seeing; she is also the context in which a culture of peace can arise. Sleeping Jerusalem, a cosmic moth- or butterfly-woman, holds two suns and two moons and many gold stars in her six wings (J2).1 Around her, in a space with the luminosity of a rainbow,2 other Emanations hover with mothlike wings. This moth imagery may derive from Blake’s acquaintance with Henry Fuseli, an artist who was fascinated by insects and raised rare moths in his home.3 Hagstrum (1965) likens the title page’s winged women to the creatures in Swedenborg’s ‘History of Worms’; they exemplify what Swedenborg calls a ‘Last Judgment’ in ‘the Spiritual World.’ Swedenborg’s worms creep into a womb ‘and there become Chrysalises . . . Nymphs, and lastly butterflies’. Undergoing ‘this Metamorphosis’ they then fly with beautiful wings to ‘celebrate their nuptial rites’ (DLW #354).4 We (Blake’s readers and

1

The gold leaf shimmers in the original Copy E. This is especially apparent when viewing the original. 3 Todd (1946: 72–3). According to Gilchrist, Fuseli declared: ‘Blake is d----d good to steal from!’ (BR55). 4 Cited in Hagstrum (1965: 315). 2

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viewers) are called, with Blake’s characters, to undergo a beautiful metamorphosis, one that has erotic as well as spiritual dimensions. When we turn to Plate 3, the preface ‘To the Public’, we can see that sheep are divided from goats at the top of the page, as they are in the Last Judgment in the Gospel of Matthew (25.32–3). Blake’s last judgment is not merely biblical, for giants and fairies here appear (creatures alien to the New Testament). Also, his is not a ‘Final Assize’ as it is in Matthew, for Blake’s ‘Sheep’ and ‘Goats’ do not exemplify eternally hostile opposites (what he calls ‘negations’). Instead, they resemble what he calls ‘Contraries’—like love and wrath, art and science, body and soul, or male and female, wherein dynamic opposition can be energizing and creative. We must be alert to these dynamic tensions and use our own creativity to traverse this illuminated poem, as we encounter disconcerting word gaps in the first paragraph (see Part I, pp. 64–5). Ellipsis is, after all, appropriate to prophetic texts.5 Our imaginations must fill in textual gaps until the clear proclamation appears: ‘The Spirit of Jesus is continual forgiveness of Sin’ (J3). The spirit of forgiveness is like a golden string guiding us through the labyrinth of the poem. In emphasizing this spirit of forgiveness Blake claims he converses with Jesus, ‘the Friend of Sinners’ who is also the God who gave Moses ‘the art of writing’ in ‘Sinai’s awful cave’ (J3). Jesus and Jehovah are one being here, changing perceptions about judgement, love, time, and space. The way up can be the way down. When Moses went up on Sinai he entered a bright cloud (Ex.24) which, like the fire cavern in Bryant’s New System (I.222), is here a heavenly cave. Heaven is a cavern; God is even in the depths of hell. Blake states that he writes so that ‘Heaven, Earth, & Hell shall live in harmony’ (J3). His last judgment is about, not accusation and condemnation, but forgiveness and transformation. No one is damned. The preface ends (as the Book of Revelation begins) explaining that Jerusalem is crafted from divine dictation. Word gaps suggest that Blake cannot capture every imaginatively heard word; readers must use their inward ears to perceive them. Each human voice colors its phrases differently; they are shaped to suit ‘the mouth of a true orator’ (J3). The poem is not meant just to sit on its lovely illuminated pages. It seeks to be given voice, to unfetter the human race, and return its readers to a primeval state of ‘Wisdom, Art, and Science’ (J3). A Greek epigraph   Ιı6 (‘alone Jesus’ or ‘only Jesus’?) hovers above a crescent moon in Plate 4, touched with gold in the original copy E. These shimmering words may allude to the synoptic Transfigurations in which Peter, James, and John see ‘Jesus only’, though Blake does not directly

5 6

This was discussed in detail by Henry More (1708: 531–3) and Robert Lowth (1787: 217–18). Blake’s spelling.

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quote their Greek.7 In John’s Gospel (8.9) the accusers leave Jesus alone (‘ŒÆ º çŁÅ ’)8 to forgive the woman taken in adultery. Blake painted this scene (c486/pl.565) and a Transfiguration of Christ for his patron Thomas Butts (c484/pl.545). With Wicksteed (1954: 117–18) I think Blake conflates forgiveness and transfiguration in the epigraph to this plate. By perceiving ‘Jesus only’ we can enter into his spirit, which is (according to Blake) ‘the continual forgiveness of sins’ (J3), transfiguring and enlightening our human and political bodies. Like Los, we can carry some visionary light into the darkness of Albion’s complex fallen world.

OPEN IN G SCEN E: AL BION REJECTS T H E D I V I N E S O N G ( 4–5 ) Jerusalem’s first scene traverses several imaginative locations. In the design a winged and naked female figure with children soars toward the crescent moon and the Greek epigraph, while a blue-robed sibylline woman looks directly at the reader. This robed woman resembles some of the medieval effigies of British ladies and queens which Blake engraved as a young man, such as Matilda Fitzwalter in Gough’s Sepulchral Monuments (Plate 8/p.31) as well as the image of Proserpine (or Persephone) Blake engraved after Flaxman’s designs for Hesiod’s Theogony (c.1816). Moving through ‘the Sleep of Ulro’ means moving through a sepulchral ‘Eternal Death’, a death without the imaginative possibility of resurrection. Blake takes us through the hell of Ulro’s ‘single vision’ which negates imagination and reduces life to abstractions. In Ulro that which cannot be quantified or empirically proven does not really exist.9 The first-person narrator is divinely called, both waking and sleeping, to expand humanity beyond this constricted world view; he sees the Saviour singing, resplendent in sunbeams. Jesus is not a distant god, but a friend within Albion (who is both a man and a land) calling Albion in song to exercise his fibres of love and connect with all living things in the Divine Body, to live not just for himself, but for others also. Unfortunately Albion is interested in nothing other than what can be measured or controlled and he wants nothing to do with the beauty of this song. He thinks such music is symptomatic of a disease.10 Wedded to rationality Albion casts out faith to live The best attested reading for Mark 9.8 and Matthew 17.8 is e ÅF . The reading in Luke 9.36 is ÅF . 8 ‘He was left alone.’ 9 Blake was seeking to deliver us from mere empiricism as early as 1788 in ‘There is No Natural Religion’ (K97–8). 10 Thanks to Frances Kennett for this insight; aural hallucinations were thought to be symptomatic of a brain disorder in Blake’s time (Taves 1999: 20). 7

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‘by demonstration’ or scientific proof, a world view that feeds his Selfhood, which, fuelled by fear and jealousy, severs him from others and from God. As has been mentioned, Blake probably gleaned the term Selfhood from Boehme. In Mysterium Magnum Selfhood ‘goes out of the divine Harmony, out of the Order of the manifested Word’ (MM15.26). Refusing to hear the divine harmony of love has very bad political, spiritual, economic, emotional, and ecological consequences. Some of these destructive consequences manifest themselves in the next lines of the poem. Albion banishes Jerusalem and declares: ‘My mountains are my own and I will keep them to myself 11 . . . Humanity shall be no more, but war and princedom and victory!’ (J4:29–33). As he does this, his ‘rivers of Beulah’ (repositories of beauty and life) darken and shrink, instigating an ecological collapse described later in the chapter (J19:1–16). Shelby Walchuk likens the ecological consequences of Jerusalem’s banishment to those in the story of Persephone, dragged from the light of day to Hades, a shadowy world like Ulro (2009: 1–7). When Persephone’s mother Demeter grieves, the earth grows as ‘cold and desolated’ as it does in Jerusalem (J19:16). Of course in Jerusalem Albion (the shadowy giant) does not, like Hades the god of the underworld, want Jerusalem’s beauty and love. He seeks to negate her. By these negations, Albion divorces himself not only from nature, but also from culture, from other creatures, and from freedom and joy. In negating the feminine love that would liberate him from doubt and fear, he is like Boehme’s Lucifer, who reaches into and diminishes Nature, severing humanity from Liberty who is our living Mother (TL8.30–42). Albion is infected by what Boehme would call Lucifer. He knows that his ‘Laws of Moral Virtue’ obliterate humanity and promote war. He seems to enjoy this (J4:32). He is a fallen man. Throughout Plate 5, Albion is falling into a cycle of wrath and fear, manifested in Starry Wheels, a macrocosmic zodiac cruelly mirroring his internal furies. (His inner personal world, the outer cosmos, and political structures interrelate.) Albion’s Starry Wheels divide nature from culture, filling cities (London, Lincoln, and Norwich), universities (Oxford and Cambridge), countries, counties, mountains, and rivers with chaos and despair (J5:1–10). As Albion banishes Jerusalem, her little ones are sacrificed ‘in Moab & Ammon & Amalek’ (J5:15). The biblical and British past and present coinhere, as past and present can do in the Bible, especially in the Book of Revelation.12 From this we can see that the world of Jerusalem (like the world of John’s Apocalypse) is not confined by ordinary space and time; different geographical places and historical eras can overlap, existing simultaneously. For Blake this Blake may be linking him with the hard-hearted Pharaoh in Ezekiel (29.3), ‘the great dragon’ who cries: ‘My river is in my own and I have made it for myself ’ (P135). 12 The majority of verses in the Book of Revelation draw upon Old Testament sources; the past is being realized in the present, and/or the near-future. 11

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simultaneity can extend into eternity. He says he wants to open us ‘into Eternity . . . expanding in the Bosom of God’ (J5:20). Leading humanity to ‘the Bosom of God’ is a great task and, like the hungry soul in Boehme’s Discourse, Blake knows that this requires profound humility. He prays: ‘Annihilate the Selfhood in me!’ (J5:22). He prays for the Saviour’s meekness and love. As he prays, he introduces the accusers and legal functionaries from his sedition trial, casting them as some of Albion’s twelve sons (see Part I, pp. 50–1). These twelve sons are unconfined by mundane space and time. They are both human and macrocosmic; they dwell both within Albion and they also revolve as starry constellations, malevolently wheeling among Golgonooza’s furnaces and looms. These starry flaming wheels have something in common with Boehme’s (TP16.21), with Ezekiel’s (1.15–16), with Daniel’s fiery wheel (7.9), and with the wheel of fire upon which King Lear feels he is bound (Lear IV. viii). In his Night Thoughts watercolors (1795–1797), Blake paints the cosmos as a beautiful family of heavenly bodies (IX.41). However, here in Jerusalem Blake identifies cosmic bodies with the accusers from his sedition trial. They constellate as mechanistic wheeling stars, the creatures of an abstract punitive God. These dehumanizing macrocosmic forces are also microcosmic; they inhabit ‘every bosom’ where ‘they controll our Vegetative powers’ (J5:39), blighting psychological and political health. Albion’s twelve fallen sons overspread England and the world, socially and spiritually. Their Emanations (carrying mythic British names like Conwenna, Cordella, and Ignoge) dwell on Mount Gilead (east of the Jordan) and on the Euphrates, an extended British Israelite territory. Remember: Britain and Israel overlap throughout this poem. Five Emanations appear in the design in the margin in Plate 5 and the text describes how they have been rent apart by the mechanistic Starry Wheels, severed from the Zoas they love and from one another. The mechanistic Starry Wheels destroy creative life; they sever Jerusalem from Albion and humanity ‘in anguish of maternal love’ (J5:47). Loving and inspiring love in her ‘little ones’ (and that includes all living things) is Jerusalem’s art form. As Walchuk observes (2009: 3) her maternity is a form of divine creativity; a ‘little one’ is a mother’s work of art. The Starry Wheels constrict life and art; when they sever Jerusalem from Vala, little ones are destroyed; bodies (made by Vala) and souls (made by Jerusalem) cannot beautifully coinhere as they are meant to do (J18:7).13 ‘Howling in pain’ as they separate, Vala and Jerusalem move eastward in a pillar of cloud (J5:48–9), like the pillar of cloud where God dwells in Exodus 13–14 (called Shekinah14), but in Blake’s illuminated poem the obtuse sons of

13 If Mrs Blake cried when Mr Blake supposedly suggested that he take a concubine to relieve their childlessness (Ellis and Yeats 1893: I, 42) she may have done so not merely from jealousy— but because, like Jerusalem, she could not exercise her maternal creativity. 14 See Exodus 35.34–40. There the dwelling presence of God (Shekinah) appears as a pillar of cloud, filling the tabernacle with unapproachable glory.

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Albion/Israel refuse to be guided by that glory. Jerusalem/Vala’s journey may also allude to Zechariah’s vision of two angelmorphic women exporting Israel’s sin (another woman) eastward to Shinar, in Mesopotamia (Zech.5.5–11); but in Blake, transferring blame demonizes other cultures or individuals, fostering ‘Religion Hid in War’. Forgiveness eradicates the need for guilt-transference or scapegoats, and Albion repeatedly rejects the possibility of forgiveness. ‘Above the head of Los’ Jerusalem and Vala howl in ‘the Chaotic Void’, an abyss called Enthuthon Benython where ‘Abstract Philosophy’ negates ‘Imagination which is the Divine Body of the Lord Jesus’ (J5:59). Jerusalem laments as Albion’s sons (now mechanistic wheels) destroy themselves, for they are destroying Jerusalem’s children—who are also Albion’s (J5:63–5). Los hears her cries of maternal anguish and his predicament mirrors Albion’s: his Emanation, Enitharmon, divides from him, and ‘the Starry Wheels’ provoke the emergence of his dark Spectre, filled (like Albion’s) with doubt, jealousy, and fear. Being part of Albion (Universal Humanity and Britain), Los is assailed by the disease of Selfhood. Albion’s rejection of Jesus and Jerusalem creates suffering and havoc throughout the world of the poem.

SCENE TWO: LOS AND THE SPECTRE (6:1 – 1 1: 7 ) The howling continues. The Spectre howls as he tears out of Los’s back ‘in terror of those Starry Wheels’ (J6:2–4). Los rages and weeps, then rises in song, but the Spectre keeps on dividing from him (J6:1–11), for Los cannot escape from Albion’s divisive disease of Selfhood. The design on Plate 6 depicts Los’s divided Spectre as a bat-like gargoyle hovering among the furnaces as he tries to fill Los with ‘murderous thoughts against Albion’ (J6:7). He is a demonic creature, like Caliban in Shakespeare’s Tempest, and in Plate 6’s design his master Los looks unperturbed by the creature’s cursing and fury. This illustrates the moment in Plate 7 where we see Los in his strength, answering ‘unterrified to the opake blackening Fiend’ (J7:7). Though the Spectre smites his master ‘with spasms & extended pains’ (J7:7), Los strives valiantly against this shadowy part of himself. The devious Spectre now has a long speech (J7:9–50), in which Blake establishes his nasty and unreliable character. First the Spectre tries to make Los feel stupid for allowing his children to be trodden and trampled (J7:9–13). Then he tries to spark Los’s sexual jealousy, casting Enitharmon as a ‘stolen Emanation’, kidnapped and ravished by Albion (J7:14). Next he tries to disorient Los (and Blake’s readers) by conflating Albion’s sons with Noah, Nimrod, and the Babel-builders, rearranging biblical paternity when calling Cush (the father of Nimrod in Genesis 10.8) Nimrod’s son (S642). He calls ‘Scofield’ (the accusing soldier in Blake’s sedition trial) ‘Adam who was New

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Created in Edom’ (J7:25–6), alluding to Esau, Isaac’s disinherited son. Blake may derive this idea from Boehme, who sees Esau as ‘the figure of the depraved Adam’ (MM55.21). But Blake restores Esau to his inheritance in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (3, K149). And in Jerusalem Blake and his hero Los seek to keep the Divine Vision (J30:15, 95:20), to promulgate ‘continual forgiveness’ (J3). The Spectre mocks such forgiveness; it is not reasonable. Continuing his attack, the Spectre again tries to assail Los with jealousy and fear. He implies that Emanations cannot be trusted. Claiming secret knowledge, he describes how Vala (now shadowy, cold, and ferocious) casts her beloved Luvah (the emotional libidinous Zoa) into furnaces of affliction. In the marginal design, a relaxed nude male hovers in a vegetating flame, his finger pointing to the word ‘Luvah’—but this figure looks neither threatening nor tormented. Is this Blake’s way of emphasizing the Spectre’s unreliability? This figure might be Urizen, described in the text as resisting Vala’s fires with ‘iron power’ (J7:33); or he might allude to the Son of God in Daniel 3, unharmed by a fiery furnace. What looks like death can be divine; flames can be petals of life; fear can be overcome. But in the written text (in creative tension with the visual design), the unreliable Spectre persists in tormenting Los, telling him that Luvah is preparing mighty sons (who last appeared as the twelve Starry Wheels) to ‘reign over’ him, beginning with Scofield, Blake’s real-life accuser. This composite accuser is called ‘a Fourfold Wonder’ (J7:48), for he contains (with Scofield) ‘Kox, Kotope, & Bowen’,15 legal functionaries in the sedition trial. This ‘Fourfold’ accuser contains an additional ‘Eight’, the fallen sons of Albion woven in Cambel and Gwendolen’s ‘webs of war and religion’ (J7:38–50). (Blake may be coping here with the post-traumatic stress of his trial.) At first Los does not succumb to the Spectre’s attacks. He retains divine vision, imagining Albion rising from his tomb and embracing all in compassion. Longing to cast off wrath (J7:53–62), he celebrates ‘holy Generation!’ rejoicing like a Moravian Christian in the purity of sexual Generation (or intercourse)16 and refusing (for the moment) to be afflicted by the notions of sin and shame, promulgated by the Spectre (J7:62–74).17 Los thinks he can protect himself, threatening his tormentor with a Thor-like hammer. The Spectre seemingly submits, slimily kneeling ‘before Los’s iron-shod feet’ on London Stone, a stone associated with Druid rituals later in the poem (J58.46, 66.57). The Spectre wants to sacrifice his master there (J8:19–29). Los can resist his Spectre because he has self-knowledge. He identifies his tormentor as his own ‘Pride & Self-Righteousness’, knowing (like Blake in the 15 Scofield and Kox (Cock) accused Blake of sedition; Bowen may have been a prosecutor (see Part I, pp. 51–3). 16 Discussed in Part I, pp. 109–10. 17 Blake expresses a similar notion in his ‘Everlasting Gospel’ (c.1818), in which Mary Magdalene realizes that her accusers call ‘a shame & Sin, Love’s temple that God dwelleth in’ and that sexual intercourse is ‘a thing on which the Soul expands its wing’ (ELG 62–8; K755).

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preface) that he is not perfect. When cutting asunder the Spectre’s ‘uncircumcised pretences to Chastity’ (J8:31), the moralities and fears obstructing love, Los acknowledges his own sexual constriction and hypocrisy, and he tries to transmogrify the leaden dross of his fury and fear (J8:30–40). His inner nature, like the cosmos, is not in balance. The design beneath his words reflects this imbalance. Here Blake paints an unhappy Emanation hauling the moon in harness;18 she is separated from her heavenly body. When Emanations and nature are separated (i.e. objectified) in Ulro, women become functional drudges of their twenty-eight day (lunar) cycle (Doskow 1982: 48–9). Though severed from his Emanation, Los wants to create a balanced world, to restore the connections between nations, individuals, and nature. He wants to use the Spectre’s negative energy for positive good, and in Plate 9 he commands his Spectre to help him forge a spiritual sword with which he can combat the culture of repression and war. The plate’s design depicts two worlds, a peaceable kingdom and an earthly world of death and lamentation (at the bottom of the page). In the peaceable world, as in Isaiah 11, the lion lies down with the lamb and a female figure pets and feeds a vast serpent which spirals out of the vines on what might be the Tree of Life, suffused with a rose-gold wash in the original. This visual image of apocatastasis, the complete universal salvation in which even the serpent is transformed and loved, contrasts with Los’s contentions with Albion’s deadly sons, who are now contained in bellicose Hand. Los’s opponents labor mightily, forging a war machine. Hand wants ‘to destroy Jerusalem and devour the body of Albion’ and he does this, not only by denying inspiration like the Hunt brothers (Mee 2003: 265–8),19 but also by directing the arms trade, oppressing farmers, and forbidding genius with ‘laws of punishment’ (J8:41–4, 9:1– 17). Like the Duke of Richmond (who presided at Blake’s trial), Hand commandeers thundering cannons and murdering guns. Arts of life become arts of death, as they do in Joel’s apocalypse (3.10) when plowshares are beaten into swords. As we have seen, Los responds to this violence and oppression with a spiritual sword (as in Ephesians 6.17). His cry, ‘he who will not defend Truth may be compell’d to defend A Lie’ (J9:29–30), may be an echo of 2 Thessalonians 2.11, where God will send imperial deceivers ‘strong delusion, that they should believe a lie’. In the Pauline passage the deceivers are damned, but Los snares them so that they, like the serpent in the design, may be transformed. Like the refiner’s fire purifying the sons of Levi in Malachi 3.2, Los’s forge flames around ‘Hand & Hyle & Coban’ (J9:21). He melts their McClenahan (2007: 141) thinks the illumination may allude to the ‘terrible work of women and children in the mines’, who were harnessed to carts (often half-naked) to haul coal. 19 As discussed in Part I, p. 50, Robert Hunt’s reviews in The Examiner damaged Blake’s reputation. The magazine was also edited by his brothers, John and Leigh. 18

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Emanations into ‘the chrysolite, topaz, the jacinth’ of Revelation’s Jerusalem foundations (S647, Rev.21.19–20). The bellicose can be changed. Los, still striving to convert his fears into productive energy, resists his deceitful Spectre, commanding him to forge more change, to uphold ‘Enthusiasm and Life’ (J9:31).20 Furiously he forges ‘the spaces of Erin’ (a creative space where change can happen) in his ‘furnaces of affliction’ (J9.34), which are like ‘the furnace of affliction’ from which Isaiah prophesies with the ‘sharp sword’ of his tongue (Isa.48.10, 49.2). In Plate 10, the Spectre curses in response to his master’s commands but Los, like Shakespeare’s Prospero, initially seems secure in his powers. To protect the children of Jerusalem (who become the children of Los) from the depredations of the Spectre, Los casts what seems like a spell: ‘ . . . be thou invisible to all / To whom I make thee invisible’ (J10:29–30), but Los may be damaging himself by doing this. When the Spectre is repressed, Shame is generated. Los contends with Shame by breaking its ‘brazen fetters’ (J10:33), and the invisible Spectre then threatens Los’s children, assailing Los with sexual guilt (J10:42–5). He pummels Los with the kind of theology Hand promulgates. Theirs is a remote and jealous god, visiting iniquity upon children, feeding ‘upon Sacrifice & Offering’ (J10:44–53). Paley compares the despairing Spectre to the poet William Cowper, tormented to madness by his fear of preordained damnation (1983: 248–51). I think he also echoes Milton’s Satan, caught between ‘infinite wrath and infinite despair’, trapped in the hell of himself (PL IV.72–5). But the Spectre is not imbued with Miltonic grandeur. He whines and cries, addicted to continuous consumption and anxiety (J10:55–9). Los makes him keep working, trying to use the Spectre’s dark energy to create spiritual and social change. This work seems to transform Albion’s ‘Sons & Daughters’ who come forth ‘from the Furnaces’, perhaps surprised to see ladles lifted and ore poured as if by their own accord. The Spectre is now invisible, and like a sorcerer’s apprentice in an alchemical tale, he wields ‘pulsations of time & extensions of space’ under Los’s direction (J10:63–11:5). He resists this work, for it sensitizes spectres, making them feel the pain they inflict when they devour what they think is inanimate (J11:6–7).21 Living beings are not to be treated as objects. Los is using the Spectre’s system to deliver individuals from that abstract system. This requires great tenacity. As he tries to create redemptive spaces, Los continually contends with the shadowy part of himself.

Mee (1992, 2003) discusses how Blake seeks to redeem ‘Enthusiasm’, denigrated in polite society. 21 For example, referring to dead children in Baghdad as ‘collateral damage’ treats them as inanimate abstractions. 20

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S C E N E T H RE E : I N T H E S P A C E S O F E R I N ( 1 1 : 8– 14:34) The Spaces of Erin are spaces of infinite possibility. (Later in the poem, in Plate 48, we shall see how Erin creatively reshapes time, space, and perception in her attempt to protect Jerusalem.) The swan woman illuminating Plate 11 helps establish Erin’s sense of infinite possibility, for she can be seen in myriad ways by different readers. Damon thinks she embodies the pathological Female Will (1924: 469), while Wicksteed sees her as a visual allusion to the ancient British condemnation of ‘Emanative joys’ in which ‘women of loose character were compelled to do penance by sitting with the water up to their knees’ (1954: 129–30). Beer likens her to unhappy Leda (1969: 198), but Erdman links her with Horace’s transmutation into an immortal swan (1974: 290).22 Stevenson observes that ‘the swan spitting out a milky liquid [?] is an alchemical symbol of arsenic’, a mediating substance in transmutation (1999: 650). I think the unhappy swan-woman indicates that transformations (when blighted by Selfhood and erotic repression) can be pathological; they are not always delightful. People and beasts may whimsically mutate in antiquarian imagery (see Archaelogia II), but in the seventeenth century it was thought that such mutations could actually arise from disease, as John Locke observes in a medical journal where he describes an epileptic mole-man and a French dog-woman (Glausser 1998: 48–9).23 In Jerusalem Albion is sick and Jerusalem is depressed, yet joy and woe are woven together. As the mutant swan droops in darkening waters, Erin and the transformed sons and daughters weep with ‘the joy of meeting . . . in loving embrace’ (J11:8–14). The Spaces of Erin reach ‘from the starry heighth to the starry depth’ (J11:12). In these spaces Eternity can open into the vegetative (i.e. material) world, but spectrous24 Selfhood, now embodied in warlike Scofield (J11:21), obstructs that opening. Albion’s humanity is immured, trapped in his cliffs (J11:15), as Jerusalem mourns and a chorus of concerned sons and daughters beg her to stop, for her tears animate shadowy Vala (J11:16–12:4) whose negating powers feed on sorrow. The female figure swimming in the design in the bottom of the plate may visually allude to Vala, for she wears jewels like those adorning Blake’s whore of Babylon (c523/pl.584)—and Babylon is Vala’s city. This figure can also be seen in many ways: Erdman sees her as Erin (1974: 291) and Paley thinks she is a happy version of the swan woman (P146).

22

Citing Horace, Ode 20, Book II. Citing Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1960 ed.: 7–8), and Locke’s notes from the Oxford lectures of Thomas Willis as discussed in Kenneth Dewhurst’s (1963) John Locke: Physician and Philosopher. London: Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 128, 260, 241, 163. 24 Remember: the adjective ‘spectrous’ is peculiar to Blake. It refers to the Spectre, the Selfhood; it is not synonymous with ‘spectral’ or ghostly. 23

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The swimmer might also be the bat-winged Emanation depicted in Plate 12’s margin, adjusting a fashionable hat25 as a Zoa with golden compasses (like Urizen in the frontispiece to Europe) measures the earth with the help of an attendant Emanation (Bindman 2000: 174),26 reducing life to that which can be measured and proven. In the written text, Los sees ‘the finger of God in terrors’, the finger that will give him the spiritual mathematic power to overcome Urizenic empiricism (J12:5–15). He will defeat Apollyon (from Revelation 9), who has here become a demon of demonstrative science. As he battles that demon, Los’s hard-working sons and daughters become angelmorphic, cosmically ‘incircling’ ‘the Starry Wheels of Albion’s Sons’, building Golgonooza in shadowy London (J12:17–24). As was discussed in Part I, pp. 134–8, the building of Golgonooza can transform the Golgotha of London into a place of ‘love & kindness . . . forgiveness . . . humility . . . thanksgiving’ (J12:25–37), a project Bloom likens to George Herbert’s ‘Church Floore’ (E931). Every screw and plank contains unique spiritual qualities. This happens in Lambeth, site of the Archbishop’s palace, the neighbourhood where Blake first created illuminated prophecies (Bentley 2001: 122–6). As he transforms Albion, Los/Blake transform the church into a place where erotic spirituality can flourish, where ‘the Bride, the Lamb’s Wife, loveth thee’. In that love, institutional as well as individual Selfhood is lost ‘in supreme joy’ (J12:38–42). Yet Albion’s jealous fears banish the bride; ‘Jerusalem wanders far away’ (J12:44). The Sons of Los keep building Golgonooza, a temple-city like those described in Ezekiel and Revelation. As they build ‘Fourfold . . . in their divisions’ (J12:45) they also resemble the apocalyptic horsemen in Zechariah 6.12–13, the four spirits of the heavens going north and south, while the temple builder, ‘the BRANCH of the Lord’, is crowned, a priest upon his throne. Richard Brothers cast himself as this Branch, believing himself destined to be enthroned in his rebuilt Jerusalem (1794: 40). Similarly, Freemasons ritually re-enact divine enthronement drama in lodges throughout the world.27 But Blake’s Los is not a priestly ruler; he is a worker like his sons and a watchman like the prophet Ezekiel. He is not concerned with the measurement of floor plans like Ezekiel, Newton, or Richard Brothers. Golgonooza exists in creative space; it is not just four-dimensional. As was discussed in Part I (pp. 135–8), Golgonooza may be designed from a variety of cosmological perspectives and in terms of human sense-perception. It is micro- and macrocosmic, situated within the human soul and out in the universe. Its symbolic, sculptured guards—the Lion (associated with St Paley calls her ‘a vanitas figure’ (P148). He is like the geometer God of freemasonry or ‘the great mechanic of creation’ in Paine’s Age of Reason (II.21). 27 See the descriptions throughout Jachin (1790). 25 26

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Mark), the Bull (with St Luke), and the Cherub (with St Matthew)—can be seen (as religion often is) from and within the different perspectives and contexts of Ulro, Beulah, Eden, and Generation (J12:61–13:20). The Starry Wheels, ‘eternal ice, frozen in seven forms of death’ prevent Golgonooza from opening into Eternity (J13:15–16)—for Albion refuses to emanate, choosing to stay trapped in his cliffs, an image Erdman relates to Britain’s blockade of America with ‘Druidic warships’ (1954: 482). Like Golgonooza, ‘the Vegetative Universe’ (i.e. material world), can open and close. When ‘the Vegetative Universe . . . opens like a flower’ (J13:34) it can open either into creative Eden or into destructive Ulro. At his furnaces, building Golgonooza, Los reveals not the Edenic city, ‘enamel’d with love & kindness’ (J12:31), but Ulro’s punitive ‘Lakes of Fire’ with ‘Self-Righteousness conglomerating against the Divine Vision’ in the ‘Twenty-seven Heavens’ of the Churches which foster revenge and anxiety (J13:38–63). Making this pathological world view visible ‘is a Creation of Mercy & Love’ (J13:45), for what can be seen and named can be transformed. (Of course what can be seen can also corrupt perception, for people can ‘become what they behold’ (J44:32).) In Golgonooza, Los sees Eden’s Tree of Life, guarded by a fiery cherub, as well as the dragon Urizen (resembling the heartless god worshipped by those who love reason). He sees the serpent Orc, the fiery child of Los and Enitharmon in Blake’s Europe and Four Zoas, who can inspire the possibility of radical social change—and/or wholesale slaughter in the name of revolution. Los also sees ‘the lovely beaming Daughters of Albion’ emanating like human temples or tapestries (J14:10–15). These starry children have translucent loins, hearts, and heads, shining with gold ‘ . . . all sorts of precious stones’ (J14:21) like the heavenly Jerusalem in Revelation 21. Their inner eternal beauty opens out into the (material) Vegetative World, but what Blake calls their western gate (the tongue) is closed, blocked by Albion’s fears (he remains trapped in his cliffs). In fallen fearful Albion, Edenic vision cannot be articulated (J14:28): divine words cannot be spoken; the Divine Body cannot be tasted or kissed. Fear casts out love, banishing Jerusalem. In the design, she (the Bride of the Lamb) hovers, ‘wing’d with six wings’ beneath a rainbow, but Albion sleeps pale upon his rock, oblivious to her love.28 In the original Copy E, the colors are quite striking; her blue wings shimmer opalescently, like a seashell’s interior. Doskow likens this design to Blake’s ‘Death of the Virgin’ (1982: 55),29 a linkage which foreshadows Albion’s eventual awakening from the sleep of death to eternal life. Jerusalem’s first chapter once ended here (K635; S658; P152). Though the Spaces of Erin and the building of Golgonooza can lead us to Eternity, they, too, can be blighted by ‘the Sleep of Ulro!’

28

As we shall see in Plate 86.

29

See Butlin (c512/pl.611).

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SCENE FOUR: SCULPTING WORLD VIEWS (15– 1 7 ) The poem’s tone changes, growing grimmer and more dissonant as ‘Hand & Hyle’ enroot in revenge in Jerusalem (J15:1–2). Were Jerusalem a musical composition, this scene might transpose earlier themes into a minor key, punctuated by percussive dissonance. A time lapse between the etching of this scene and the preceding ones could explain the tone change. Jerusalem is created over a period of more than sixteen years. It is rather like the Book of Ezekiel, where fifteen prophetic episodes, spanning twenty-five years, move from Israel’s and Jerusalem’s fall to widening worldwide disasters, finally culminating in the vision of the restored temple-city. Of course, Blake’s episodes interweave; fall and restoration are continually possible. The speaker of the poem is not confined by linear time as he declares: ‘I see the Past, Present, & Future existing all at once’ (J15:8). This first-person prophet no longer sees beams of love and hears the Saviour’s song as he did when the poem opened (J4). Now he sees ‘an awful vision’. Los’s translucent human buildings (J14:15) are overshadowed by ‘a mighty Polypus’, the disease of vengeance spreading from Skofield who enroots like a mandrake ‘into every Nation’ (J15:3). Blake prays for the strength to awaken Albion and to contend with ‘Bacon & Newton & Locke’, whose deadly empiricism is ‘sheathed in dismal steel’ (J15:11). He must change his culture’s basic assumptions. In ‘the Schools and Universities of Europe’, the narrator sees Locke’s oppressive loom powered by Newton’s waterwheels, weaving a fabric enshrouding all nations (J15:14–17),30 a world view negating emanation. Emanation is about freely giving forth qualitative energy, an elemental love that cannot be quantified or controlled. In this love (this emanation) inner and outer worlds interrelate; they commingle. But the ‘Bacon & Newton & Locke’ world view does not perceive ‘an Outside spread without & an Outside spread within’ (J18:2); it does not see how the external outer world can interpenetrate with imaginative inner worlds. From that limited and diseased perspective, a text (like Jerusalem) does not exist both outwardly and inwardly, filled with imaginative life. It is an object to be analyzed, not a piece of visionary theatre. Such objectification, arising from the worship of ‘Bacon & Newton & Locke’, dehumanizes; it fosters the violence and exploitation Blake condemns throughout his works. In his ‘Annotations’ he condemns Francis Bacon’s imperialist support for a culture of war. The poet proclaims: ‘Man is not Improved by the Hurt of another. States are not Improved at the Expense of Foreigners. Bacon has no notion of anything but Mammon’ (69–70; K402). Newton, numbering the stars, created what can seem like a cosmos fixed by 30 Did Blake know that Locke supported compulsory spinning schools and workhouses for poor children? See Glausser (1998: 5).

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empirical laws, divorced from the human-divine.31 Locke’s ideas about sense perception can reduce life to material processes; human beings do not emanate with ‘fibres of love’, they absorb information.32 In ‘the Water-wheels of Newton . . . Works of many Wheels . . . with cogs tyrannic’ (J15:16–18), the macro- and the microcosmic, the inner and outer worlds, do not interpenetrate, as they do in Blake’s Eden, where ‘Wheel within Wheel, in freedom revolve in harmony & peace’ (J15.20). Los rages around his anvil to deliver the life of the mind from the deadly abstractions of Bacon, Newton, and Locke, but his fury is not entirely constructive. Trying to break a cycle of violence can unleash violence; contemplating a world filled with vengeance, lust, shame, and the slaughter of the innocent can infect the beholder with destructive fury. In Plate 15, Albion’s British-Israelite sons ‘roll apart over the Nations’ (J15:24), spreading fibres of strong revenge. Reuben (coinherent with Hand) enroots ‘in the narrow Canaanite’ (J15:25), which can allude to Israelite land-lust as well as Reuben’s liaison with Bilhah, his father’s concubine (Gen.35). Reversing time, Reuben flees from his father’s curse (Gen.49.4) to ‘the limit Abram’, the loins of his paternal great-grandfather who himself flees from Chaldea ‘shaking his gory locks’ (J15:26–8). Abraham sacrificed a ram caught in a thicket (Gen.22.13) but in Blake’s design a young man vegetates in a thicket beneath what looks like an angry father.33 Blake sees Albion in the place of death; he sees the Furnaces of Los ‘in the valley of the Son of Hinnom’, a place of child sacrifice in Jeremiah. There the Lord responds to such abominations, not by saving the innocent, but by making the people of Judah ‘meat for the fowls of heaven’ (Jer.7.30–4). Blake’s plate suggests that God’s response to his recalcitrant children perpetuates the abomination He condemns. Los’s furnaces glow ferociously in the chaos of the first winter, the cold that came after the expulsion from Eden (J15:30; P153). The furnaces glow in the Hinnom valley which is also ‘Hampstead, Highgate, Finchley, Hendon, Muswell Hill’, suburbs of North London (J16:1–4). Children and nursing mothers go into the furnaces and mills (J16:16–27), an industrial crucible which Los uses to map Israel onto Britain. Golgonooza participates in the injustice Los seeks to transform, but like Lazarus, it can be raised from generative death.34 Golgonooza’s gates can open into imaginative space, ‘looking every way’ to the Zenith-Nadir-Circumference-Center, the tongue-eye-ear-nose, to Beulah-Ulro-Generation-Eden (J16:32–3), as discussed in Part I (pp. 136–8).

31

For more, see Peterfreund (1998). For more on Blake and Locke, see Frye (1947: 3–29); Glausser (1998); Makdisi (2003: 261–2). 33 Thanks to John Hart of Shimer College for this observation (January 2004). 34 ‘The association of the city with the Body of Christ means that there is a hope for the resurrection of the city’ (Fiddes 2000: 285). Allusions to Lazarus occur in J37i, 50:11, 60:69. 32

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Los and his sons labor to protect Britain’s counties from ‘the Conflict of Luvah & Urizen’, the tumult of abstraction and fury overspreading the earth (J16:29–30). Los can protect them by sculpting the stories that shape geopolitics. These stories are what are taken for granted before social thought begins. The myths of a culture shape its political and economic assumptions. The mythic British–Israel interface (which affirms the chosenness of the British people and helps fuel the drive for Empire) is one of the many ‘bright Sculptures of Los’s Halls’ (J16:61). These sculptures are not abstract Platonic forms; they hold ever-varying stories of all that can happen and will happen, like Blake’s sculpted copperplates. Los’s hall contains the story of ‘Horeb & Sinai’, of ‘Olivet & Calvary’. It holds theophany, law, blessing, and crucifixion, templates that can lead to human–divine relationships. When all the gates of Golgonooza are open, we can move through infinite human stories, through infinite data, and into the Divine Body. Yet Los is fallible, and succumbs to his Spectre’s vicious insinuations. In Plate 17 Los initially behaves like an alchemical master, compelling the Spectre to work in fire, water, earth, and air (J17:2), but the ‘opake’ fiend finally succeeds in blighting him with fear, lust, wrath, and shame. Fearing desire, Los sends his lustful spectre to stalk the Daughters of Albion ‘as the hound follows the scent’ (J17:3). Frightened, they flee to hide ‘in the Druid Temples in cold chastity’ (J17:14), places of human sacrifice. This intensifies the erotic repression and violence Albion initiated when he banished Jerusalem and her daughters in Plate 4. Here in Plate 17 fallible Los longs for Enitharmon, yet when tricked by his Spectre he does not regard her with love and respect. As he seeks to control her, she divides from him, morphing into a ‘red Globe of blood, trembling beneath his bosom’ (J17:47–57). Los, infected with shame, hides this biological abstraction in garment of wool. His sorrow exacerbates the breakdown of his relationship, much as Jerusalem’s sorrow animates Vala, her shadow. Though he longs for ‘the merciful forms of Beulah’s Night’ (J17:28), he is gripped by ‘the Spectrous Darkness’ (J17:57), the fear and despair of Selfhood. Wrath also infects him and this can separate the human from the divine. When Los tries to destroy his Spectre, he negates the possibility of divine intervention when declaring: ‘nor shall that which is above Ever descend into thee’ (J17:43–4). This impedes the harrowing of his own inner hell—because the Spectre is part of him. Echoing Jesus in Mark’s gospel (9.43–8), Los calls his Spectre ‘an Unquenchable Fire’ and any who would consort with him ‘a never dying Worm’ (J17:46; S664). But that condemnation fills Los with hate. Like fallen Albion, he now seeks to use Hand and Skofield as ‘ministers of evil’—and this empowers Albion’s fallen sons. Despite his valiant efforts, Los is now infected with the Selfhood blighting those sons.

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SCENE FIVE: HAND AND HYLE INTENSIFY FA LLENNESS (18– 1 9 ) Albion’s fallen sons wreak havoc within humanity and throughout the world. Their disease of Selfhood blights ‘the Four Regions of Human Majesty’ (J18:1), which probably refers to the Four Zoas (embodying reason, imagination, emotion, primal drives). When an ‘Outside spread Without & an Outside spread Within . . . meet in One’ (J18:2–3), inner and outer worlds no longer interpenetrate in beauty and wonder as they did among the translucent children of Los in Plate 14. Now, by contrast, these inner and outer worlds fill one another with negativity, creating a void of doubt and despair. In that void, Albion’s sons join ‘in dark Assembly’, reminiscent of the assembly of fallen angels in Paradise Lost (II.1–400). Again Albion’s sons morph into ‘Immense Wheels’ (J18:8). Now Hand and Hyle do more than negate Jerusalem as Albion did in Plate 4. Like the punitive god in Ezekiel 16, they curse her as a harlot daughter. The forgiveness she embodies threatens their war machine, which depends upon the concept of ‘enemies’. Adoring Vala, the Deist Goddess Nature, they build her city of Babylon, replacing Los’s building of love and kindness from Plate 12 with a structure of ‘unforgiving porches’ and ‘tables of enmity’ (J18:23). The fallen sons, self-deluded, feel divinely chosen. Erroneously they declare that they ‘the Perfect . . . live in glory’, redeemed by substitutionary atonement, ‘by Sacrifice of the Lamb’ (J18:27). They project their own shame onto Jerusalem and onto her children (J18:30–2). Their religion of ‘War and deadly contention’ (J18:20) destroys the Divine Body. The fallen sons proclaim that Jerusalem must sacrifice her children and be cast into ‘the Potter’s field’, the pauper’s graveyard bought with Judas’ silver in Matthew 27 (S666). Hand and Hyle’s own children, ‘the little ones’ dear to Christ,35 shall be destroyed. As he curses, Hand morphs into ‘a mighty polypus vegetating’ (J18:40), i.e. a tumor of Selfhood spreading violence and materialism throughout the world. He joins with Hyle and Coban (an anagram of Bacon?) in Starry Wheels, ‘rending a way in Albion’s Loins’ (J18:44), as both a microcosmic tumor and a macrocosmic pseudo-divine force that ravages Albion’s sexuality, negating his erotic energy. Thus erotically crippled, Albion vegetates in a sleep of death (J19i), yet in the design on Plate 18, divine vision still hovers (J18i). The androgynous angels surmounting this plate may be Jerusalem and Vala in harmony, giving the outer body and the inner soul to the lovers in a glowing ‘Night of Beulah’ (J18:45). The delicately painted angels are like Boehme’s ‘two Beings, the inward Heavenly and the outward Heavenly . . . mutually espoused to each other’ (MM18.6), as Vala’s materiality and Jerusalem’s spirituality are 35

Luke 17.2; Matt.18.6; Mark 9.42.

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mutually wedded to one another in Eden. Moon-arks flank these angelic creatures and in Bryant’s New System (II.331–2) moon-arks can symbolize resurrection. Though pale spectrous sons fall in the margin (J18i), they may rise again as they do in the next plate. Exiled children can return. But in Ulro, internal and external disasters rage in Albion, in nature, and among his children. This breakdown resembles King Lear’s, where Gloucester laments that ‘Love cools, friendship falls off; brothers divide; in cities mutinies; in countries, discord . . . and the bond crack’d ’twixt son and father’ (I.ii.100–5). In Jerusalem the external consequences of Albion’s internal fragmentation pour forth in relentless iambs: Where once he sat he weary walks in misery and pain His Giant beauty and perfection fallen into dust Till, from within his wither’d breast, grown narrow with his woes The corn is turn’d to thistles & the apples into poison (J19:6–10).

Jerusalem, his exiled Emanation, wanders in the wilderness of Albion’s interior ‘in the cold and desolated Earth’ (J19:16), which is both the land of Britain and the human psyche. Here she is called his ‘Eon’, an Amonian name for the sun in Bryant (I.17) as well as a Gnostic term for ‘Emanation’ (S667). Exiling his sun-Eon thrusts Albion into wintry death. Albion’s wheeling sons (outward forms of his inner fragmentation) revolve into a ravening Satanic Mill (J19:19), attacking the ‘Human majesty and beauty’ of what Blake elliptically calls ‘the Twenty Four’ (J19:17–24). This can allude to both the four-and-twenty elders attending the throne of God in Revelation 4.4, as well as the twenty-four cathedral cities explicitly named as Albion’s friends in Jerusalem’s Chapter Two. The spectrous (i.e. the fallen) try to pervert the Twenty-Four with ‘Suspition & revenge’, smiting Albion and Luvah with ‘seven diseases of the soul’, the pathological notion of seven deadly sins (J19:26). Albion and his sons build a rocky form, entombing the friends (human cathedrals) in ‘self-righteousness’ and bellicose ‘pride of virtue for victory’. Los also gets ‘roof ’d in from Eternity in Albion’s Cliffs’ (J19:30–3). The ‘Circumference’, Albion’s outward defining boundary, is closed and he cannot and will not emanate. Jerusalem is being entombed as Albion’s inner world darkens. He turns towards Beulah, which can be a redemptive space—or a self-enclosed world, blighted by jealousy. Though confined, Los keeps watch as Albion, sleeping, flees inward into ‘the Night of Beulah’ (J19:37–9).

SCENE S IX: BEULAH AND THE VEIL ( 1 9:40– 25:17) As the action moves to Beulah, the poem’s tone changes again. In the course of this scene Jerusalem longs to restore Albion, but Vala undermines her,

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enmeshing the fallen man in her deadly veil. It is helpful to recall what Beulah is and the nature of the veil before moving through the scene. Beulah is a romantic and emotional state, a place filled with rivers and lovely flowers. Its ‘sweet moony night . . . spread over with wings’ is created by Jerusalem and Vala (J19:43–5). In Beulah they commingle, embracing in bliss beside the river of Albion’s city in the huge lily of Havilah, as depicted in Plate 28’s design in Chapter Two. Havilah is a land of gold in Genesis (2.10–11), encompassed by Eden’s river Pison. In Jerusalem the bliss of Beulah can open into Eden (J97–8), but only when Selfhood is lost. Throughout this scene Albion does not enjoy the bliss of Beulah. He thinks bliss is sin and despises Jerusalem, who lovingly and sensually tries to turn Vala back to Eden/Eternity, the ‘time of love’ (J20). When Albion finally speaks (J21) he raves like Lear, tortured by jealousy, pride, and shame, as is Vala who manipulates him. When Jerusalem protests he curses her, intensifying her separation from Vala—and from himself (J21:18–23).36 When separated from the feminine, Albion curses God and is finally horrified by what he has done. He tries to change, but Vala’s veil enmeshes him in Plates 23 and 24. Throughout the entire scene Vala’s veil changes, shape-shifting until it becomes a self-animating system ‘Vegetating Knot by Knot’ throughout the earth (J24:61–2). When Vala spreads the ‘scarlet Veil over Albion’ (J21), she promotes a religion of war, sacrifice, and what sounds like ritual purity (J21:50–22:15). This may be like the scapegoating in Leviticus 16.15–16, where the priest must kill the sin-offering ‘and bring his blood within the veil’, making an atonement ‘because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel’. Tormented by uncleanness, by thoughts of ‘sin & secret appetite’ (J21:27), Albion curses Jerusalem, his daughters, and himself, an agony intensified by the ‘Sin’ Vala claims to see within ‘the dark recesses’ of his ‘secret Soul’ (J22:14–15). Vala’s veil, like the woven tapestry in the Temple’s holy of holies, separates the human from the divine. Albion calls it ‘a Law, a Terror, & a Curse’ as it engenders a vision of ‘God in the dreary Void . . . wide separated from the Human Soul’ (J23:29–32). In Jerusalem, as in the synoptic Gospels,37 the resurrecting death of Jesus rends the veil, eradicating the division between the human and the divine, as is done in 2 Corinthians 3.14–16 when Christ lifts the veil from human hearts. There Paul alludes to the veil Moses wore when descending with the Law from Sinai, a veil which stands between the heart and God. As Albion enmeshes his soul and his society in a veil of cruel Moral Law he knows he is destroying himself, yet he finds Vala’s despair more seductive than Jerusalem’s forgiveness. 36 This split may be informed by Bryant’s story of Babylonian Belus, a god who splits a woman, thus separating heaven from earth (1775: III.103). 37 Matt.27.51; Mark 15.38; Luke 23.45.

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When the scene begins in Plates 19 and 20, Vala craves power and wants to undermine Jerusalem. Jerusalem tries to reason with her, exhorting Vala to ‘delight in innocence before the face of the Lamb’ (J20:9), but Vala resists bliss, infusing Beulah’s night with the cold oppression of Ulro. She tries to infect Jerusalem with shame and despair, equating herself with a repentant wanderer and a slave chained (like Samson) ‘in the mill of a stranger’ (J20:12–21); she moans like manipulative Dalila in Milton’s Samson Agonistes. She implicates Jerusalem in incestuous shame, crying: ‘Thou art my sister and my daughter!’ (J20:19). (As has been mentioned (Part I, p. 47), Blake’s Emanations and Zoas, like figures in alchemical texts, need not be restricted by mundane sexual taboos.) Vala’s words of guilt constrict the free cosmos, as bearded men haul flaming stars in the illumination, harnessed like the unhappy Emanation hauling the moon in Plate 8. Vala’s words can fill Albion’s children with guilt and shame. Uninterested in abstractions like purity or pollution, Jerusalem urges Vala to remember ‘pity & love’ (J20:35). She says that what Vala and Albion erroneously think of as ‘sin’ (i.e. sexual bliss) can easily be forgiven. In ‘the time of love’ (the state of Eden), Albion erotically breaks through Vala’s veil, but in the state of Ulro (which is controlled by Moral Law) Vala remains a virgin, preferring cold chastity to the orgasmic liberty Jerusalem embodies. Indeed she wants to destroy Jerusalem and her nuptial joy, for that joy undermines the power of the Moral Law so dear to Vala (and Albion). When Albion finally breaks his silence and raves, using Lear’s poison cup and garment imagery (Paley 1983: 221–2), he is overwhelmed by the disease of shame: shame divides sons and daughters, forests and gardens, sun and moon. He projects that shame onto Vala, Gwendolen, Ragan, and especially Cordella, who is identified with Jerusalem (J21:5–25). As illustrated in Plate 21, Hand and Hyle sadistically whip the daughters ‘thro’ the streets of Babylon’ (J21:28– 30) like the beadle who hotly lusts after the whore he whips in Lear (IV.vi.160). Albion blames his daughters for the madness banished Luvah (his repressed libido or ‘feeling function’) inflicts upon him, raving as his mountains and cities shrivel ‘in cruelty’ from Druidic Mam-Tor (in Derbyshire) through Druidic Wales. His children are stuffed into perverted arks of war from which they burst, not in resurrection, but in battle (J21:31–49). Vala becomes a war goddess. She has filled Albion with shame and his repressed erotic desire is channelled into the fury of war. Enmeshing Albion in her scarlet veil, Vala casts herself as a crucified victim rescued by Jehovah and the Babel-builders to animate their golden ark. She can bilocate. Though in the army’s ark, her shadow hovers simultaneously beside Albion (J22:1–5). Like the goddess Astarte (or the Druid Andraste), she feasts upon ‘the flesh of multitudes’ (J22:6). Albion longs ‘to pride in chaste beauty’ and curses Jerusalem when (like Cordelia) she tries to make him see that love cannot be empirically quantified. Caught in the fiery iron wheels of punishment Albion

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prefers Vala’s tortures to Jerusalem’s love. Yet as he entombs Jerusalem she continues to forgive him. He hears her calling him ‘our best beloved’, calling him to Divine Vision (J23:8–2). Her wings vegetate in Plate 23’s illumination as she begins falling into deadly sleep. Two small human-moths or bat-like fairies flit away from Albion’s curse in the margin. As Jerusalem’s voice fades, Albion realizes he has made a big mistake. For nearly two plates (J23–5) he contends with shame, with abstraction, with Jesus, and with Vala’s veil, until he finally dies in the arms of the God he denies. His monologue’s subtextual complexities would challenge a welltrained actor. Reactions undercut themselves. Albion’s curses contain repentance which lead to an unbearable awareness of the Divine Body he crucifies, and a longing for the Jerusalem he annihilates. As in Plate 4, Jesus is present while Albion denies him, but because he is severed from Luvah (the libidinous and emotional Zoa) and from Jerusalem, Albion cannot cope with forgiveness. Moral Virtue and Law entrap Albion in a hell of being unable to love. His selfinflicted tortures surpass the labyrinthine miseries of Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost (IV.32–113). Like Milton’s Satan, Albion knows he damns himself. The pale human forms trapped in the roots of the illumination in the lower portion of Plate 23 may be outward signs of his inward torment. With Vala’s veil he recoils, sinking into dark Ulro. Among the fires of his Druid Dragon altars he does more than repudiate the Saviour. He vilifies the Divine Image, thrusting the veil Christ once rent back whole upon him (J23.29–37). Unlike Job (2.9), Albion curses God—and dies. He calls the Ulro god to torture divine humanity ‘in this abyss of sorrow’, a veil (vale) of tears (J23:36–8). Then he hates himself, flashing back to the time when he and his sons danced naked in a giant’s dance to be seized with shame as the cosmos fragments (J24.1–11). They dance like John Wood’s Druids in Choir Guare who worship a moon-goddess (1741: 98–100), like Vala in her golden ark. A figure stretches across a stormtossed golden moon-ark in the design above Albion’s words in Plate 24, but she looks more like the outcast Emanation than a warrior queen. With Nicholas Warner I believe she suggests hope and the possibility of spiritual transformation (1980: 48–9), even when encompassed by the fury of Albion’s stormy Selfhood. In this crazed state Albion recognizes two cities, two feminine divine contexts. He knows he has forsaken Jerusalem and wails that he has crucified the Divine Body, the Human Imagination, in Moral Law (J24:23–4). He knows he has forsaken Jerusalem for Babylon, a city of self-gratification built with the misery and destruction of families and nations, ruled by the torments of a vengeful god (J24:17–35). He longs for Jerusalem’s compassionate globalization, the mutually beneficial commerce engendering ‘blessings of gold / And pearl & diamond’, enriching ‘Japan & China to Hesperia France & England’.38 38 Immanuel Kant also envisages a culture of peace and fair trade (1795/1957), but his plan does not include Blake’s concern for aesthetics and erotic spirituality.

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Daughters sing in Jerusalem’s prosperous courts; even Babylon is welcome there (J24:26–50). This inclusive global system resembles that of the restored city in Zechariah (2.10–12) where the daughter of Zion rejoices with many nations in Jerusalem’s holy habitation. The Lord dwells in her. But meeting the Lord is something Albion cannot bear. He feels smitten like Job with the torments of Luvah, whose gentleness and mildness are like Christ’s. Albion knows his ‘crucifying cruelties of Demonstration’ destroy Luvah (his emotional being) and is horrified to see the Saviour (who should be dead in Luvah’s sepulchre) risen before him. Albion cannot bear love; he would rather die than be forgiven. In agony he cries: ‘Look not so merciful upon me, O thou slain Lamb of God.’ Still trapped in jealous fear he escapes into the sleep of death (J24:56–60). Vala’s veil becomes a worldwide web (J24.61–3). Three naked women, often identified as Vala, Rahab, and Tirzah,39 disembowel the cosmic man in Plate 25’s design while (in the written text) a chorus in Beulah laments. They mourn for the fallen Sons of Albion. Addicted to vengeance these fallen Sons slay the Divine Lamb within them (J25:1–10). Those in Beulah, seeing how all things dwell in the Divine Body, echo Jesus in the Gospels as they cry: ‘For not one sparrow can suffer and the whole Universe not suffer also’ (J25:8).40 They call upon the Lamb of God to descend and create the states from which individuals can be delivered, an idea Blake encountered in Swedenborg’s Divine Providence (#83). Yet many individuals, trapped in ‘Sin & Righteousness’, fall with Albion into Ulro’s sleep. Some people would rather die than change.

INTERVAL (26) We have now journeyed through a world where the inside and outside interrelate, a relationship that grows pathological when divine imagination and the feminine are repressed or negated. Jesus and Jerusalem both dwell within every human breast and are the place where all may live with forgiveness in joy. Golgonooza is both an internal imaginative structure and a way of ordering infinite data: all the stories that were, that are, and that shall be, can be found there. But because Albion worships the abstract reasoning power (embodied in the Bacon–Newton–Locke trinity) and craves power, he disparages imagination, negates the love of Jerusalem (because it cannot be

39

See Erdman (1974: 304); Mitchell (1978: 201); P169. Throughout the text, Vala is called both Rahab and Tirzah; this plate may depict a deadly feminine trinity. The figures could also be three of the weaving Daughters of Albion, weaving deadly webs like the Norse Norns. 40 Matt.10.29; Luke 12.6.

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quantified or controlled), and despises forgiveness. As we have seen, this has disastrous psychological, theological, ecological, and political consequences. The story we traverse with Albion, Jerusalem, Los, and the Spectre grows increasingly disjointed as Albion breaks down, disemboweled by the Emanations he negates. He is killing himself and the world around him. Los valiantly tries to rescue him in Chapter Two. He revives the fragmented Divine Family, seeking to reintegrate Albion (which is all humanity, including us readers) into the Saviour’s Kingdom. But Albion cannot be restored without the Emanation he has banished. She must flee, for she is threatened by his destructive sons.

Plate 26 In Plate 26 Jerusalem recoils from Hand, vegetating in flame. Paley sees that ‘his cruciform posture makes him a demonic parody of Christ’, as does the flame halo around his head (P170). Hand and Jerusalem, both clearly labeled, stand in a fire-world reminiscent of ‘the burning fiery furnace’ in Daniel 3. Is Jerusalem here facing the Beast that would devour her? Blake surrounds his heroine with these words: ‘JERUSALEM IS NAMED LIBERTY AMONG THE SONS OF ALBION’ and punitive Hand does all that he can to destroy her liberty. The Liberty Jerusalem embodies is not about gratification; Babylon’s ‘provings of destruction’ come from gratifying selfish desires (J24:28). The Spectre’s endless consuming can never be satisfied (J10:55–6). I think Jerusalem’s ‘Liberty’ is like ‘the law of liberty’ in the Epistle of James (1.22–2.20). There liberty involves gladly working to care for the poor, feed the hungry, and cultivate kindness and mercy.41 In Isaiah 61 the prophet is clothed like a bridegroom and adorned like a bride after proclaiming God’s liberty. When Jerusalem and Jesus embrace, hierarchical power structures dissolve. Liberated ‘little ones’ rejoice; the poor are not compelled ‘to live upon a crust of bread’ (J30:30). Albion’s furious sons oppress the poor, cultivate war, and condemn erotic joy. In Jerusalem’s Chapter Two, Los will strive against oppression, rousing the Cathedral Cities to rescue Albion from the destruction he inflicts upon himself and on all living things. Vala, the Druid Nature goddess, may triumph—as Jerusalem retreats from those who would annihilate her.

41

See also 1 John 3.17.

2 ‘To the Jews’—Rescue Attempts THE PREFACE (27) Jerusalem’s second chapter begins with an address ‘To the Jews’, but these Jews are not just the children of Israel: they also coinhere with British Druids.1 Like many antiquarians and some Freemasons, Blake believed that Britain was ‘the Primitive Seat of the Patriarchal [Israelite] Religion’. Invoking the authority of ‘the learned’ he asserts that ‘Abraham, Heber, Shem, and Noah . . . were Druids’, building Druid temples throughout the earth. After all, learned Antiquaries (like Elias Ashmole or Edward Davies2) believed ancient Britain was the cradle of civilization, and John Milton thought ‘that even the school of Pythagoras and the Persian wisdom took beginning from the old philosophy of this island’ (1792: 52). Blake thinks that Britain’s old philosophy (or ‘primeval wisdom’) contained an ‘Everlasting Gospel’ which is ‘the Religion of Jesus’ (J27), the forgiveness of sins (J3). Forgiveness, in ‘fibers of love’, connects each creature to all in the Divine Body. According to Blake, ‘the Wicked’ destroy this Gospel of forgiveness, creating separations. The ‘Wicked’ sever the human from the divine; they separate humanity from nature, from the cosmos, and from God. This is what happens in Ulro. Separating heaven from humanity, nature from culture, and nations from individuals creates a chaotic world filled with rapaciousness, accusation, and fear: the state called Satan. Blake tells the Jews that their tradition ‘that Man anciently contain’d in his mighty limbs all things in Heaven & Earth’ was ‘receiv’d from the Druids’ (who are the source of wisdom and civilization). Blake read extensively and could have encountered ideas about ‘Cabbalists’ and their Adam Kadmon, the celestial prototype of the world from whom all things emanate, in a variety of religious and theological works;3 he may also have heard about the primal 1

See Part I, pp. 126–33. Edward Davies (1804: 334) argues that the Celtic and Hebrew languages were originally one tongue, a ‘more ancient . . . Druidical’ one. He also asserts that the Welsh bard, Taliesin, ‘declares that his lore had been detailed in Hebraic’ (1809: 94). 3 Books that discuss Adam Kadmon and the ‘Cabbalists’ include: Formey (1767: 158–9), Gill (1763–1765: 9), and Basagne (1708: 253, 299). 2

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Adam Kadmon from Swedenborgians (Van Meurs 1998: 289). Apparently Swedenborg knew of the notion (dating back to Philo and more fully developed by Isaac Luria4) that God and the whole universe are in human form. Boehme’s cosmology is similar; in his Aurora the blood is water, ‘the Entrails or Guts signify the operation of the Stars . . . the Heart signifies the Heat or the Element of Fire’ (A2.30–58). The primal human universe, the Jewish Adam Kadmon, is a great Divine Body. Blake wants to bring us back to that Body. The preface’s ballad (J27:1–88) describes how Albion fragmented, falling from the bliss of Jerusalem (in which all things interrelate). But this fall (and the fall of humanity) need not be terminal, for ‘Divine Vision’ (embodied in Jesus, a Jew) eternally returns, awakening us to a life filled with forgiveness and joy. Jerusalem and her beloved Lamb can rejoice among England’s meadows in a London built with ‘pillars of gold’, arched and shining ‘upon the starry sky’. This golden London is a city of peace where ‘every English Child is seen, Children of Jesus and his Bride’ (J27:19–20). Mutual forgiveness replaces Moral Law (J27:16–25), and its ‘[stock] Exchanges’5 foster, not greed and rapaciousness, but mutually beneficial building projects (J27:85–9). Unfortunately Albion is still stricken with Selfhood and wants nothing to do with anything resembling beneficence. He falls into Druidic sleep (J27:29–30), the emotional and imaginative unconsciousness engendered by what Blake thought the Druids epitomized: the worship of Reason (which objectifies and dehumanizes all things) and a culture of violence, arising in part, from erotic repression. Albion’s loins give forth no life; his Spectre ejaculates ‘the pomp of war’, ravaging Europe and the Levant. Blake sees the Rhine red with blood as it was during Napoleon’s campaigns; Satan rages at the Euphrates, as in ancient times or in the twenty-first century. Yet ‘the Divine Vision’ still shines translucent within the corrupt ‘Human Form’ (J27:33–56); humanity can be freed from the disease of Selfhood. We all must contend with Selfhood. Blake sees that he must do so: he (being part of humanity) is blighted by Albion’s ‘Patriarchal Pride’ (J27:74–8). He recognizes the fallen part of himself, claims the ‘warlike Fiend’ as his own, and calls upon the Bride and her Lamb to transform it. Blake wants to enter into the bliss of Jerusalem and Jesus, a bliss Albion despises, for Jerusalem’s joy

4 Many Blake scholars—Frye (1947: 151–6), Bloom (1963: 204); Raine (1968: I.4, II.199–202, 210–13); Paley (1970: 69, 94); Van Meurs (1998: 273–4, 282–4), and especially Sheila Spector (1983/84, 2001, 2007) liken aspects of the poet’s prophecies to Kabbalah. Spector reads Jerusalem as a Kabbalistic allegory, but as she indicates, Blake’s ‘Lurianic’ imagery could also come from Jacob Boehme (2001: 33). Isaac Luria (1534–1572) lived in Ottoman Palestine and (like Boehme) he wrote about the infinite light of God. Luria’s light contains ten vessels or spaces (the Sefiroth) who are also interconnecting male and female figures (called partzufim)—like Blake’s Zoas and Emanations (or Boehme’s ‘Signatures’). Spector also relates Blake’s notions to Henry More’s ‘Exposito Mercave’, a treatise about Ezekiel’s chariot vision (1983/84: 89–90). 5 London’s first stock exchange opened in 1688 (see Encyclopedia Britannica).

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destroys the repressive family values by which he aggrandizes himself (J27:77–81). Jesus sings: ‘A man’s worst enemies are those / Of his own house & family’, echoing Matthew 10.36 and Luke 12.53 where he declares that the love of God disrupts filial obligations, setting sons against fathers and daughters against mothers. Though Albion’s laws of obedience spread global oppression and destroy him, the Bride and Lamb overturn those laws; they welcome ‘every Land’ to walk with spiritual currency in divine ‘Exchanges’ (J27:65–88).6 These Exchanges are not ‘a den of thieves’ like those within the temple precincts in the Gospels.7 The spiritual, erotic, aesthetic, and material wealth of nations contributes to the building of Jerusalem, in whose economic system generosity is more contagious than greed. Blake praises the humility he finds among Jews, but laments that the body of divine humanity is fragmented by a religion of sacrifice (or substitutionary atonement) in ‘a Feminine Tabernacle in the loins of Abraham & David’ (J27), patriarchs whose dysfunctional polygamy caused family tumult and political strife; the secret feminine tabernacle8 alludes to female genitalia made taboo by Albion’s Moral Law and Vala’s cold chastity. Moral law is at the heart of what Blake calls ‘Sexual religion’ later in this chapter (J30:11), a religion that divides male and female, engendering destructive conflict. When Blake calls Israel to ‘follow Jesus’ in ‘Mental Sacrifice & War’ (J27) he is calling for creative conflict, for a clash of differences that inspires imaginative connection rather than the alienation arising from rigid moral codes. As Paul in Romans 11.17–24 imagines two cultures engrafted together (the Jews and the Gentiles), Blake here merges the Jews and the Britons; he seeks to deliver all from deadly Moral Law. Albion (humanity) needs to be freed from destructive mind-forged manacles. This chapter, ‘To the Jews’, is about the attempt to do so.

SCENE ONE: ALBION’S F ALL: THE REF U GEE REPORT (2 8– 3 0 ) As the Gospels retell the story of Jesus from different perspectives, so do Chapter Two’s first scenes present a different version of the story of Albion’s fall. First, we see an image of Beulah: two naked human forms commingle in Havilah’s lovely Lily (as Vala and Jerusalem commingled in Plate 19). In early versions of the plate, the graceful figures look obviously male and female

6 7 8

The prophet Micah (4.1–2) sees that many nations shall go up to Jerusalem. See Matthew 21.12–17, Mark 11.15–17, Luke 19.45–7, and John 2.14–17. See J22:30, 27, 34:29, 56:40, 66:14, 68:15, 88:19.

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(Erdman 1964: 12, 18–20), but their gender is less apparent in Blake’s fully finished Copy E where they can be seen as two female forms.9 This commingling horrifies Albion (keeper of the Moral Law) as he sits enthroned at his judgment seat in Tyburn (where even children were executed in the eighteenth century10). Albion, ‘the punisher & judge’, proclaims that a passionate friendship (perhaps like that of Blake’s patron Rebekah Bliss with her beloved Ann Whitaker11) is ‘horrid to think of when enquired deeply into’ (J28:3–8). Albion’s loins freeze as the gallow’s tree of Moral Law spreads throughout the earth (J28:1–16), eradicating erotic freedom and forgiveness. Like Joshua, who erects altars of unhewn stone after utterly destroying ‘all the inhabitants of Ai’, to honor what he thinks is the Law of the Lord (Josh.8.24–31),12 Albion erects twelve sacrificial altars ‘of rough unhewn rocks’ where he will slay ‘(miscall’d) Enemies for Atonement’ (J28:20–1). Albion’s sons flee from these Druid altars (called ‘Justice and Truth’) knowing that this inflexible Moral Law will require their father to kill them. In fear they, too, build fortifications against ‘Divine Humanity and Mercy’, seeking to annihilate Jerusalem (J28:23–6). From Eternity, the Divine Vision (Jesus) intervenes (in Plate 29), like the deus ex machina in a Greek tragedy. He appears ‘like a silent Sun’ setting in clouds of blood on Tyburn—which was Zion in the time of love (J29:1–5)—but this Saviour is no longer singing as Jesus did when he first appeared in Plate 4. As in Ezekiel’s open heaven (1.26), Jesus appears as ‘a Human Form’. His ‘Voice Divine’ assesses the problem and offers some hope (J29:4–26). In the marginal design beside the divine words, flame encases Jerusalem and pale sons fall beneath her. The Voice Divine sees that Albion must be freed from his ‘Reactor’, which Paley aptly links with Newton’s inexorable third law of motion (P176).13 If for every human action there must be an equal and opposite moral reaction, then Albion’s children can be terrorized into obedience. Although this vengeful anthropocentric cosmology destroys blessed places (Jerusalem, Ireland, Oxford, Ephrata14), Jerusalem’s Saviour declares that the banished shall return and Albion shall rise (J29:25–6).

9

See Witke (1986: 100); Mitchell (1978: 206–7); P173; Hobson (2000: 150–62); Connolly (2002: 214). I think Blake’s angelmorphic characters are like those in Paradise Lost who ‘can either sex assume, or both’, being ‘uncompounded’ in ‘their essence pure’ (I.424–5). 10 Many boys were hanged there after the Gordon Riots in 1780 (Bentley 2001: 57). 11 Davies (2003: 74–84) discusses the probable lesbian relationship of these women; they bought Blake’s works. 12 P174. 13 Discussed at length in Part I, pp. 103–4. 14 Blake’s Ephrata, ‘the city of the woods’, may allude to ‘the habitation of the Lord’ in Psalm 132 as well as the Behmenist commune in Pennsylvania (Penn’s woods), which grew out of Kelpius’ community dedicated to the Woman Clothed with the Sun. Count Von Zinzendorf, the Moravian leader, visited Ephrata in 1741 before Blake’s mother became a member of his London congregation. Ephrata was known for its antiphonal choral singing, illuminated manuscripts, and economic communism (Ward n.d.: 5–8).

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The final portion of this scene features the refugee Emanation and Spectre fleeing ‘from Albion’s darkening locks’ (J29:28) to tell their version of his fall. Keynes, Stevenson, Erdman, and Paley all think ‘locks’ should be emended to ‘rocks’, but I think Albion’s locks shake as Abraham’s gory locks shook in Plate 15. The refugees are fleeing from his head (which is also a landscape). We must remember that the landscape coinheres with the human; Blake wants to reconnect nature with humanity. Like the messengers in Job (1.15–16), the Spectre and Emanation ‘alone are escaped’ (J29:29); they look like a close-up of the bat-fairies rising from vegetating Jerusalem in Plate 23’s design. In Plates 29 and 30 the Spectre is named Urthona, which is Los’s eternal name (discussed in Part I, pp. 56–7). Here he is unfallen; he is not an ‘opake fiend’ (J7:8). Glowing rose-gold he protects Enitharmon ‘as her Guard’, as they flee from ‘Sexual Religion in its embryon Uncircumcision’ (J30:3–11), the religion that fills the Sons and Daughters of Albion with doubt and despair. As in Deuteronomy 10.16, 30.6, and Romans 2.29, circumcising the heart and mind cuts away the barriers obstructing human–divine love. Back in Chapter One, in Plate 8, we saw Los cutting away the Spectre’s ‘Uncircumcised pretences to Chastity’, the barriers and assumptions afflicting Albion (and humanity) with shame. When telling their story, the refugee messengers pair Albion not with Jerusalem, but with Vala—and this is not erroneous, for back ‘in the time of love’ Jerusalem and Vala were a composite emanation, co-creating bodies and souls (J18.7, 19.32–41). The refugees tell of how Vala and Albion walked together ‘on the steps of fire’—like the King of Tyre walking among fire stones in Ezekiel (28.14) before his fall. The ‘Prince of Light’ (an epithet for Urizen15) fades as Albion worships his watery shadow, Luvah, a shadowy ‘Son of Man’ (J29:35–57). This intensifies and ritualizes the fragmentation we found in Albion’s monologue back in Plate 24. The messengers describe how Albion worships what he hates and attacks what is Christ-like within him, causing Luvah to smite him with Job-like boils ‘from head to foot’ (J29:64). Albion retaliates, crippling himself as he constricts Luvah’s ears, eyes, and tongue, banishing ‘Spirits of Pity & Love’ (J29:71), corrupting emotional life. Now shadowy, Luvah and Vala pour into the human heart, blighting its paradise with jealous fury. (In the original copy E the marginal design looks like cardiac tissue; the watercolour is rose-red, not lavender.) Weeping in confusion, the refugees cannot tell whether ‘the vast form of Nature like a serpent’ is rolling out of ruined Jerusalem or ruined Vala (which is not surprising since the two can coinhere). When nature is separated from humanity, from culture, and from God, it can be objectified, even demonized—which can destroy humanity

15

See FZ1:321, 329; FZ2:8, 37, 65; FZ3:12, 46. J29:35 echoes FZ3:46.

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and culture. ‘The Divine Hand’ protects the frightened fugitives ‘bearing them thro’ darkness’ to the safety of Los’s bosom. ‘The Divine Vision’ is with Los (J29:72–30:20). He is a beacon of hope for humanity. Los begs the Saviour to arise and protect Britons oppressed by Albion’s erotic constriction and his self-righteous charity (J30:21–40). By banishing Luvah, Albion perverts compassion; he expects gratitude from the poor he compels to live on crusts. Erdman (1954: 399–401) and Doskow (1982: 97–8) liken Albion’s attack on Luvah to Britain’s war with France, repressing the liberty embodied in Jerusalem. Praying, Los declares: ‘Humanity knows not of Sex’ (J30:33). In Blake the word ‘Sex’ is not used as we use it today;16 it is an erotic abstraction, objectifying the beloved. This is what happens in the state of Ulro. In Beulah, however, ‘the Male enters magnificent’ between the female tabernacle’s ‘Cherubim’ (J30:35). As in Moravian spirituality, corporeal erotic embraces enact the commingling of the human and the divine. There are no sexual objects; human-divine bliss is intersubjective, freed from the constrictions of shame and Moral Law, ‘the Rocky law of Condemnation’ (J30:36–8). The Loins, revealed in Plate 7 as ‘the point of mutual forgiveness’ (J7:66), are here ‘the place of the Last Judgment’ (J30:38), or apocalyptic apocatastasis. Erotic ecstasy can reveal how all participate in the universal forgiveness animating the Divine Body. The female ‘tabernacle’ (or vulva) should be a source of joy, not shame. It is not taboo, like the veiled ark in the Hebrew Temple which only the high priest can approach. Los calls to Jesus to ‘rend the Veil!’ —whereas Albion occludes divine vision ‘with rocky clouds of death & despair’ (J31:1). Moral Law and empiricism petrify humanity, filling souls and societies with shame and sorrow.

SCENE TWO: THE TRIUMPH OF VALA (31:2 – 34:35) When Los enters Albion’s interior ‘caves of despair’ he is horrified to see that something has gone wrong on what a biochemist would call an enzymatic level. With ‘his globe of fire’ (which we saw in the design in the frontispiece) Los makes a labyrinthine journey through London and sees Albion’s ‘Minute Particulars’ programing human souls to be bricks in the ‘pyramids of Heber & Terah’ (J31:6–13), which may allude to the Masonic legend that pyramids were built in honor of a Divine Geometer17—a cerebral god who seems to lack

16

This will be discussed at greater length (Part II, pp. 238–9). The Masonic ‘Master’s Song’ describes Noachite Abram bringing ‘from UR Geometry the Science Good’, which created the pyramids (Anderson 1734: 85). 17

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a Divine Body. Los then comes to the London docks, ‘the Isle / Of Leutha’s Dogs’, a hotbed of prostitution in nineteenth-century London (D239) where ‘all the tendernesses of the soul’ and human jewels of Albion are ‘cast forth as filth and mire’ (J31:15–21). Perverted Luvah builds the Tower of London. Bethlehem, the Hebrew ‘house of bread’, becomes the ‘dens of despair’ of Bedlam, London’s horrific lunatic asylum (P180). Los weeps as he battles with his desire to find and punish ‘these Criminals’ who destroy Albion’s human form. He struggles to pity ‘the sinner who is gone astray’ (J31:23–38). In horrid solitude Los sees Jerusalem ‘Among the ruins’ of the Temple, an allusion to both the Jewish sanctuary and the London seat of the Knights Templar (S758), warriors committed to chastity in the vanguard of the Crusades. From London Stone, Los can hear Jerusalem refusing to be codified by social strictures. ‘I cannot be thy Wife!’, she cries to Albion, as Vala’s death shuttles sing (J31:39–49). In Ulro, marriage is about possession and control.18 Albion harms himself when he seeks to control Jerusalem, for (as we saw in the last chapter) when he destroys her Liberty his own ‘Minute Particulars’ cannot emanate (or flow forth) from him. Like Boehme’s Sophia, Jerusalem will perish if she is controlled or owned. She must be free or she cannot be who she is. Rather unwisely, Jerusalem awakens Vala, her mourning shadow. This exacerbates the trouble she seeks to ameliorate, for Vala, using titillating chastity to enslave men and their children, perversely seeks to destroy Jerusalem—who is her ultimate home. Like Hand and Hyle (J18), Vala curses Jerusalem as ‘the impurity & the harlot’ longing (like Los’s Spectre) to annihilate love with shame. Enmeshing Jerusalem in iron threads she calls for child sacrifice ‘to sustain the glorious combat & the battle & war’ that aggrandizes her (J31:50–70). In Plate 32’s design, Vala stands before what looks like St Paul’s, the cathedral revered by Freemasons as London’s Jerusalem temple (Gilbert 2003: 25, 275–97), a symbol of deified Reason and imperial power. She lifts her dark veil to enshroud not only Jerusalem and her golden children, but also the living forms of gothic spires.19 When Jerusalem is enshrouded she is separated from Albion and he cannot emanate. He becomes ‘only the petrified surfaces’ (J31:1–5): his spirit is dying within him. Albion’s ‘petrification’ affects Los; his furnaces no longer glow. Among their ruins Los seizes his ‘Hammer & Tongs’ shouting ‘for Aid Divine’. He may be surprised to see Albion’s fallen sons coming from his petrified bosom to rescue the father they fear, bearing him on a golden couch as they erect Druid temples around him (J32:8–15). These are structures of dehumanizing Reason and Moral Law. 18

Brewster discusses fallen marital relations in Blake (1992: 70–85). Fiddes discusses how this plate exemplifies the tension between Gothic (imaginative) and Grecian (mathematical) form throughout Blake’s work (1991: 88–90). 19

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Within those Druid temples Albion turns his back on Divine Vision (J33:1). As Los’s Spectre ripped apart from him (J6), so Albion’s now tears ‘from the back & loins’, proclaiming: ‘I am your Rational Power . . . & that Human Form you call Divine is but a Worm’ (J33:5). This Spectre is like the polypus in Chapter One (J18), an abstract heart from which spring many heads, ‘three or seven or ten’ (J33:22), like Blake’s ‘Bacon & Newton & Locke’ trinity (J15) or St John’s seven-headed apocalyptic beast with its ten horns (Rev.13). The rational Satanic Selfhood devours the human heart and mind, filling Albion with nihilistic despair. The Spectre makes us think that nothing is eternal; cities and people are transient. (Of course Blake believes that all things exist eternally and coinhere with one another; heaven and earth interpenetrate.) In Plate 33 we see creatures reminiscent of Ezekiel’s Zoas (composite-lion-ox-eagle-men) drawn unwinged, unhappily strapped to the human ‘Worm’ . . . that ‘plows the Earth in its own conceit’ (J33.6–8). In the final portion of this scene Vala, like Boehme’s ‘false . . . proud bride’ (TP13.44), seduces Albion, embracing his garment in tears as her ‘autumn ripeness’ overshadows Jerusalem and ‘the Vision of Jesus’ (J33:29–34). She reminds him that her temple-city (the original Babel in Masonic legend) was built ‘by Albion’s children’, the Israelite Druids. Albion melts ‘in milky fear’ as she woos him, cooing: ‘look upon me. I alone am Beauty.’ She tempts him with her ‘secret Cave’ (J33:36–34:2), a cave he can never enter or possess according to the Moral Law they both worship. Albion tries to resist Vala’s seduction—but the cosmos once within and around him seems to be constellating around her: she is his Nature Goddess and must be adored. Vala is supposed to dwell in ‘outward forms’, creating external material bodies, and that is not harmful if she works in concert with Jerusalem who gives the souls. But when Jerusalem is banished Vala elevates herself in Albion, enmeshing humanity and England in the worship of what is external, material, and erroneously forbidden. Enthroning Vala makes Albion a wasteland (J34:3–16), and this horrifies Los who cries: ‘Albion is the Tabernacle of Vala & her Temple And not the Tabernacle & Temple of the Most High!’ (J34:30–31), protesting like the Pauline writer who cautions the Thessalonians against the imperialist deceiver 20 ‘who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God . . . so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God’ (2 Thess.2.4). Vala’s manipulations meld with Bacon and Newton and Locke’s materialism to fashion ‘the Sexual Reasoning Hermaphroditic’ (J33:27), a narcissistic way of thinking in which sex is equated with power. (In the eighteenth century ‘hermaphrodite’ could be used as an insult used to connote emotional autism;21 in Blake, the hermaphrodite is a self20

Paul’s reference is to Caligula. In an open letter (published 30 July 1796 in Philadelphia) Tom Paine condemns George Washington’s ‘indifference . . . the cold hermaphrodite faculty’, since Washington did nothing to help his former colleague when Paine awaited execution under Robespierre (Keane 1995: 430). 21

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enclosed system, walling up the paths of life.22) Self-absorbed, the Blakean hermaphrodite does not commingle with others; no fibers of love connect him/ her to another. The Female Will (spawned by Albion’s worship of Vala and his denigration of Jerusalem) intensifies self-absorption and severs men from women, using sex and shame to gain power. This lust for power has geopolitical ramifications, affecting Blake’s Druids, Israelites, and his contemporary Britons. Los sees Hand in the form of Reuben, enslaved by the Female Will and imperialist desires, ‘enrooting . . . into Bashan’ (J34.26) the land where victorious Israelite warriors ‘utterly . . . destroyed the men, women, and children of every city’ (Deut.3.6). Additionally, Los sees Reuben/Hand as Merlin, a British Druid enchanted into living death by his Lady of the Lake.23 As in the Day of Judgment, graves thunder beneath Los’s feet ‘from Ireland to Japan’ (J34:35–40). Imperialism (enmeshed with erotic repression in Blake’s world view) must finally be overcome—but Los, unfortunately, can be as fallible as Albion.

SCENE THREE: THE DIVISIONS OF R E U B E N ( 34 : 3 6–3 6 : 42 ) In Plates 34 and 36 Los is infected with Albion’s disease; he is becoming repressive. He does not expand: he contracts. He wants to control the political and erotic lusts of Reuben (formerly Hand). But Jesus is merciful. While Los is contracting Reuben’s senses, Jesus/Jehovah is limiting the extent of contraction (in Plate 35). These things are happening simultaneously: Los rages while Jesus forgives. Los would like to be building a redemptive ark, but his constrictions and furious forgings spread the horror he wants to control (as in Plate 15). For ‘Sixty Winters’ Los rages ‘in the Divisions of Reuben’ (J36:3), a phrase from Deborah’s song in Judges 5.15–16. Like Vala, Deborah sends men to war, and she rejoices in an enemy mother’s bereavement, praising Jael, who murders her invited warrior-guest as he sleeps. Vala (and her daughters) can be called by the Israelite names of Rahab and/or Tirzah. Here Blake’s Reuben lusts after ‘beautiful Tirzah’ (J36:1), who is (with Jerusalem) ‘terrible as an army with banners’ in the Song of Solomon (6.4–10). Erotic and political lust intertwine; repression and violence reinforce one another. As Albion threatened to constrict Luvah in Plate 29, so Los here constricts Reuben’s senses. (And as he does so, Albion’s daughters cut Luvah in pieces (J34:45–50).) 22

Modern psychologists might say that Albion and Vala are in a narcissistic co-dependent relationship. 23 S721 and Whittaker (1999:153–4). In Geoffrey of Monmouth (1911:139–41), Merlin engineers a stone circle, or Giant’s Dance.

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Blake may be imagining Druid Israel when he places sleeping Reuben in Bashan ‘between Succoth & Zaretan beside the Stone of Bohan’ (J34:45), the stone named for Reuben’s son in Joshua 15.6. The territory beside the stone is featured in the Masonic initiation ritual (described in the eighteenth-century best-seller Jachin and Boaz);24 this enacts 1 Kings 7.46 where Hiram casts temple vessels ‘in the clay ground between Succoth and Zaretan’.25 Like Tom Paine, William Stukeley, and John Wood of Bath,26 Blake conflates Hiram’s work with Druid building projects. But (unlike Blake) Stukeley and Paine would not have conjoined Druid projects with the Amorite genocide in Bashan (Num.32 and Deut.3) where the Israelites rejoice in ‘utterly destroying the men, women and children’. We know such slaughter horrified Blake.27 Four times Los constricts Reuben and four times Reuben returns for more punishment. Enacting the Spectre’s rational pronouncements (J33:5–11 ), Los shrivels Reuben into a worm, trapping him in ‘Sexual Organization’. Blake understands that the world contracts as our senses shrink, for objects ‘seem to vary’ as perception varies (J34:55–6). As in modern physics, how you look at something affects what you see.28 Reuben’s deformed cravings terrorize Syrians, Moabites, Edomites, Egyptians, Chaldeans, and the Lebanese among whom Albion’s children dwell. In fear these people become like Reuben. They become what they behold (a phrase repeated throughout the scene), imitating the bellicose behavior that is set before them. Spectrous constrictions create contagious violence throughout the Levant—and the world. Meanwhile the Divine Saviour appears in Albion’s bosom, perhaps in response to Los’s earlier plea for ‘aid Divine’ (J32:9). As mentioned above, ‘The Divine hand’ can set merciful limits, containing conflict without constricting Albion. ‘The Divine voice’ (solo and polyphonic) speaks from the furnaces, ‘the voices of the innumerable multitudes of Eternity’ (J35:4) As in Daniel 3.25 ‘the appearance of a Man’ (J35:5) is seen among the flames. We see Christ resurrected (bearing the marks of crucifixion), creating Eve in a fireworld (J35i), acting both beyond time and within it. Blake’s Jesus descends into Ulro (within Albion) to limit Satan (or Selfhood) and Adam (which

24

Discussed in Part I, pp. 36–7, 133–4. A Masonic candidate must state that Hiram’s pillars are cast: ‘On the plain of Jordan between Succoth and Zaretan in the Clay ground’ (Jachin 1790: 35). 26 Discussed in Part I, pp. 128–32. 27 In his ‘Annotations to Watson’ Blake declares: ‘ . . . a defence of the Wickedness of the Israelites in murdering so many thousands under pretence of a command from God is altogether blasphemous’ (K387). Additionally, Reubenite Bashan is the place where the giant Og was destroyed in Deuteronomy 3.12, which may parallel the British GogMagot giant-slaying in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Histories (1911: 21). 28 In Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the method of perception determines how a particle is seen. 25

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Boehme would link with lusts and the flesh), creating states through which individuals may pass beyond ‘punishment of the Law’ (J35:6–16). Like Christ, all ‘must pass thro’ condemnation’ to awake beyond it (J35:10). ‘The State Satan’ is accursed, but not the individuals trapped within it. Los does not yet understand this; he attacks individuals. Jerusalem trembles as she sees Los’s hammer afflicting her children, including Reuben, Hand, and Merlin, a henopoetic triad (J36:21–3). These afflictions have far-reaching consequences. The Four Zoas rage and separate ‘from the Limbs of Albion’, intensifying psychological and political fragmentation. ‘England who is Britannia’ divides into Jerusalem and Vala (J36:21–9). As Los constricts Reuben’s senses, Golgonooza’s guardians, ‘Fairies & Genii & Nymphs & Gnomes’, also become ‘ravening deathlike forms’ (J36:36–7). Mythic Atlantis sinks as the sea floods Albion in Ulro with grim ‘Creation, Redemption, & Judgment’ (J36:38–41). In the previous plate Christ promised that individuals can pass through such states. Fallible Los must do so if Albion is to be rescued.

SCENE FOUR: LOS AND THE ETERNALS (36:43– 4 1 : 31 ) The action cuts from flooded Giants to a chorus of laughing Eternals imbued (like Swedenborg’s angels) with erotic energy. Blake’s Eternals laugh at ‘the terrors of chastity and . . . Morality’ proclaiming: ‘Art and Science cannot exist but by naked beauty display’d!’ (J36:45–9). A clitoral petal-flame accompanies these words in the marginal design. As in Moravian spirituality (Part I, pp. 107–11), erotic bliss is a template for the sacramental spirituality of life. Other Eternals (‘who contemplate on Death’) are more concerned, since what Albion and his children erroneously believe can be ‘productive of the most dreadful Consequences’ (J36:52–3). The terrors of morality can engender ‘Eternal Death’. So ‘the Divine Mercy’ (embodied in Eternals) must step in to restore the fallen, a project which includes the restoration of space-time (which, in Ulro, is abstracted from the Divine Body). Even ‘Length, Bredth, Highth’, must be reintegrated in ‘Divine Vision’ (J36:54– 6), as in Ephesians 3.17–18, where the love of Christ is the measure of all things; the quantitative is a subset of the qualitative. Albion cannot see this. At home in Ulro, he sees only what can be measured, proven, or legislated, and being trapped in Selfhood, he wants to control those things. The Eternals can help him move from Selfhood (where he lives in space and time) to the Divine Body (where space and time are ingredients with which forgiveness can be woven). In Plate 37 we see what may be the raising of Lazarus (John 11) and/or the return of the prodigal who ‘was dead and is alive again’ to his father (Luke 15.24) in a British–Israelite landscape. Flanked by an English oak and an

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eastern palm, the luminous Saviour cradles the collapsed man (wayward Albion, his dead friend). A winged sun spreads beneath them, ten versions of which were engraved by Blake and/or Basire for Bryant’s New System (I.pl. VIII). Stukeley, the great Antiquarian, identifies winged suns with a Druid Trinity (1743:7), but, according to Blake, the Druidic religion leads to deadly abstraction and violence. The curve of the winged sun mirrors the wingspan of the spectrous red pterodactyl hovering above comatose Jerusalem. She is being killed by Albion’s deadly Moral Law. When Selfhood severs Albion (humanity) from Emanation, Jerusalem’s life-giving forgiveness and erotic joy become shameful, even criminal. Enraged by Albion’s deadly morality, Los steps apart from the Eternals to unleash his murderous Spectre upon Albion’s (J37:1–5). (Los is filled with righteous indignation, but his Spectre turns what could be redemptive wrath into destructive rage.) Compassion, however, momentarily eclipses the Spectre’s shadowy power. When Los sees how sick fallen Albion is, his fury turns to pity and he rejoins the Divine Body’s search and rescue team (J37:10–12). But Albion does not want to be helped. He flees from universal love, petrifying body and soul in jealousy and war, like the hard-hearted Israelites who turn from the Lord in the Bible.29 Blake’s Saviour follows him, displaying ‘the Eternal Vision’ of ‘the Divine Family’, a social body structured in love (J38:10–13). Like Pauline spiritual warriors (Rom.13.12; Eph.6.10–17), the Divine Family pursues Albion, polyphonically calling in inexorable forgiveness: ‘Our wars are wars of life!’ (J38:14–26). Shooting ‘arrows of thought’ as in the design on the following plate (J39i), they do not repress anger. Love and wrath meld in ‘all renewing’ energy through which they contract into a multitude or expand to see as ‘One Man . . . Jesus the Christ’, the Good Shepherd seeking Albion.30 The first-person narrator (Blake) appears to introduce London, ‘a Human Awful Wonder’, passionately calling Albion to return (J38.29–30). But hardhearted Albion shuts out London’s children (including Blake), thus harming his own ‘nervous form’. London’s ‘vegetating blood’, the Thames (which is Albion’s circulatory system), flows through Los’s furnaces (as in Plate 16). The micro- and macrocosmic interconnect. ‘I give myself’, London calls (J38:28–39). From his mundane flat in South Molton Street, Blake (a child of London) sees cities and rivers and mountains as immortal human characters (J38:43–50). Edinburgh wears fortitude’s garment, like the white robes given to martyrs emerging from the altar in Revelation 6.6–11. Blake’s ‘Victims to Justice’ pass through a golden gate as marginal golden figures (in the design) morph in 29

e.g. Ps.95.8; Isa.63.17; Ezek.11.19; Zech.7.12;Mark 8.17; Heb.3.8. Connolly suggests that this expansion–contraction is like that described in Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge, where infinitely acute senses can perceive extended and infinite bodies (2002: 203–4). 30

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capillary stems. Are these microcosmic figures ‘vegetating’ (falling from Generation into Ulro), or are they preparing to Emanate from within the Divine Body? It is not clear. Just as ambiguously, Albion flees through ‘the Gate of Los’ (J38:54–39:1). Doskow calls this ‘a crucial door of change’ through which Albion and the reader can pass from Ulro to Eternal Life (1982: 84). The gate is not physically visible; Satan’s rationalist ‘Watch-fiends cannot find it’. It may be like Swedenborg’s two spiritual gates: one opens to heaven; the other, to hell (HH #430). Outside the gate of Los, Albion moves into invisible and abstract Satanic mills, blighting Urthona (the eternal name of Los) with Rahab/Vala’s ‘System of Moral Virtue’ (J39:1–10). Yet Los, now linked with Cambridgeshire (a territory associated with John Milton)31 holds fast to his Divine Vision, kindly asking Albion: ‘Whither fleest thou?’, and Albion replies: ‘I go to Eternal Death!’ (J39:12–16). Albion thinks death must be eternal, but in Eden/Eternity this is not so. What looks like an apocalyptic horseman of death (Rev.6.8) dominates the design at the top of the page; but in Young’s Night Thoughts (which Blake illustrated) a similar horseman, ‘the King of Terrors’, can also be ‘The Prince of Peace’ (NT III.63). What looks like a sunset (J39i) might also be a dawn—but Albion (in Ulro) cannot perceive this. Like Everyman, he is filled with fear and cannot bear to face death alone.32 Girded and shod as if for the Passover (Ex.12.11–12), Albion is wearied like Job with burdensome friends. Yet (in the Bible) the angel of death leads to Israelite freedom, and despair precedes Job’s divine vision (Ex.12; Job 37–8). Los (‘not yet infected with the Error’) proclaims that Albion’s journey is not about punitive atonement, the ‘Moral Severity’ which ‘destroys Mercy’ (J39:16–27). Shuddering with compassion, Los calls for help and four fiery chariots appear before Albion’s sixteen-pillared porch (J40:1–8). Every valley, river, and hill becomes human, proclaiming oaths of divine allegiance (J40:11–19). Yet as Nature becomes human in the written text, we see human forms vegetating in the marginal design (J40i). Ulro/Generation and Beulah/Eden are simultaneously present. The land cries that Albion is sick, rousing twenty-four cathedral cities to process in an extravagant parade of watery chariots drawn by ‘Living Creatures’. Have Ezekiel’s ‘Living Creatures’ been domesticated? (Ezek.1.5–14) Blake’s Creatures weep as Albion teeters on the brink of his self-created ‘Eternal Death’ of ‘Moral Justice’, but the Divine Family’s mercy holds at bay that false netherworld ‘fill’d with Revenge and Law’ (J40:29–36). This Divine Family, a chorus of Eternals, glimpses Albion’s darkened Eon (who is Vala without Jerusalem) producing, not fibres of love, but fire-serpents within 31 Paley (P191) makes this association; Milton studied at Christ’s College and Blake painted him in ‘his character of a student at Cambridge’ (K619). 32 Everyman asks death: ‘Shall I have no company from this vale terrestrial?’ (cited P191).

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his ribs. ‘The Divine Family’ which is ‘Jesus the Saviour’ weeps, as Christ does before raising Lazarus (J40:40–4; John 11.35). Blake calls Christ’s Eternals by English names, explaining that English is the ‘rough basement’ language Los builds as an antidote to Albion’s melancholy (J40:58–60). Like the Elizabethan alchemist John Dee, Blake and/or Los may be conversant with angelic languages.33 Swedenborg praises ‘the speech of the angels’, which only rarely resembles human discourse, in his Heaven and Hell (#234–7). (Blake’s puzzling names, such as Allamanda, Entuthon, Enion, and Oothoon may come from the imaginative realm of the angels.) Eternal Selsey appears, who ‘submitted to be devoured’ by eleventh-century flooding (D363), rising again as Chichester, where Blake was tried. Winchester, Gloucester, Exeter, and Bristol can all help Albion (J40:45–59)—and Bath can be dangerous and/or benevolent. Like Blake’s engraving of Christ as the Samaritan offering what looks like a serpent cup to the man fallen among thieves (NT II.37), Bath can be seen as ‘the physician and / The poisoner’ (J41:1–2). He is ‘Legions’, which may refer to the demon in Mark 5.9 as well as to Bath’s Roman connections (P195). The legendary King Bladud founded Bath in 813 BC after being cured of leprosy there (D37), but in Geoffrey’s History Merlin sees that Bath’s healing waters will ‘bring forth death’ (S735). Bladud, ‘an Arch-druid’, dedicated Bath to Minerva (Geoffrey 1911: 11, 28), a goddess of reason and war—like Vala. Blake’s Druids, like malevolent Bath, delight in cruelty in ancient Malden as well as contemporary Canterbury (J41:1-6). Vala’s theme, ‘the Shuttles of Death’, again sings in the sky, Druidic Bath (assimilating with Luvah) threatens Jerusalem, and a deadly black veil weaves over London, nearly enmeshing Blake’s heroine. Jerusalem flees from west London (South Molton Street?) to Lambeth (where Blake lived in the 1790s), reaching the Surrey Hills. These hills coinhere with the land of the Rephaim, original Canaanites whose land was appropriated by God for Abram (Gen.14.5, 15.20). There Jerusalem’s children are ‘seiz’d /For victims of sacrifice’ (J41:12–13). Unable to protect them, she longs to ‘repose in death’ but Beulah’s daughters snatch her away (J41:13–14). We can find her if we use our imaginations to enter into the text and go through a translucent grain of sand to Oothoon’s palace (J41:15–21). Like ‘the gate of Los’, this sand grain cannot be perceived by Satan’s ‘Watch Fiends’ for it cannot be measured or controlled. It opens imaginatively into Oothoon’s palace, a place of liberty and love. In Blake’s earlier prophecy, Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793), resilient Oothoon is ‘the soft soul of America’, heroically rising from rape and degradation to extol the virtues of freedom and love, calling to all created things: ‘Arise, and drink your bliss!’ (VDA8:10; K195). In Jerusalem, if Satan or his Watch Fiends find Oothoon’s 33 Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica fascinated antiquarians and Rosicrucians (Yates 1972: 50–4). For more on Dee and angels, see Woolley (2002: 166–82).

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palace they will lay it waste with the notion of sin, for it resembles the Lily of Havilah where Jerusalem and Vala commingle, freely enjoying the bliss of ‘soft slumberous repose’ (J41:21–2). Free love threatens the Moral Law the spectrous Watch Fiends use to control Albion’s twenty-eight cathedral cities. When assaulted by such fiends, the churches that should be his guardians torment Albion—and humanity. Infected with Moral Law, the cathedral cities are places of ‘cold despair’ and ‘tortures of self-condemnation’ (J41:23–6); they are ‘Churches of Selfhood’ (Morris 2009: 4), negating compassion. Filled with fury, fear, and self-righteous holiness, the families of Albion distance themselves from the suffering of others like Aristotelian spectators protected by the ‘fourth wall’ of ‘a tragic scene’.34 They are especially untouched by the sufferings of enemies or infidels—as some today may regard the slaughter of innocents in war as ‘collateral damage’. Blake’s visionary theatre seeks to shatter such Ulro perception. I think Blake is the ghostly scribe in Plate 41’s design, inserting himself in his apocalypse as Alfred Hitchcock does in his films.35 We must decipher the mirror writing on the apocalyptic scroll at the sea’s edge. Rocky clouds frame a slumped giant, fallen in a place like Patmos. Like Oothoon’s sand grain or Los’s gate, mirror words ask us to change our perspective. To read them we must change the way our eyes work and then we will see that all we have to do is throw our spectres in the lake (J41i). But like Albion, we cannot change if we are too afraid to do so.

SCENE FIVE: TH E RESCUE ATTEMPT (42– 6 ) When Los opens his apocalyptic furnaces, he and Albion cannot bear the revelation (J42:1–5), for opening the furnaces forces Albion to see what is within him (Whitmarsh-Knight 2007: 570). Albion sees that he destroys what he loves; Los sees death, but he gains the strength to face this because the Saviour, ‘the Divine Vision’, descends into him, weeping in compassion—as Albion raves in fear (J42:5–8). Cursing Los, Albion again curses Jesus. Demanding ‘righteousness and justice’, he curses his daughters, slandering Los’s beloved Enitharmon with accusations of harlotry (J42:81–6). Divinely possessed, Los will not tolerate Albion’s notion of righteousness immured in Moral Law. Los has ‘no time Paley thinks Blake here condemns Aristotelian ‘catharsis’ (P195). In their work on Blake’s biblical paintings, Luis and Carol Garrido assert that Blake gives his own face to Jesus in ‘The Virgin and Child in Egypt’ (c669/pl.962), to St. Michael in ‘Michael binding Satan’ (c524/pl.585), to the angel of Revelation (c518/pl.579), among others (Blake Society Presentation 14 February 2006, London). 34 35

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for . . . morality and virtue . . . self-glorying and pride’. Filled with Divine Vision, he knows he is one of the Four Zoas, angelmorphic, eternally living (J42:19EN>–28). Inspired, he proclaims the glory of emanation: ‘There is no Limit of Expansion; there is no Limit of Translucence in the bosom of Man forever’ (J42:35–6). But Albion is uninterested in translucence; he is opaque and contracted. As we know (from Plate 35) the Saviour has set a limit on contraction. Now Los explains that the redeemer/creator participates in ‘Contractions Limit’, which is ‘named Adam’ (J42:29–31). This phrase refers to the creation of humanity—in the flesh.36 The creation of man and woman sets the stage for the future incarnation of the redeemer himself. Born of a woman to die and rise, the creator/redeemer reveals the infinite translucence of what Boehme calls humanity’s ‘paradise body’ (TL11.11–12.26), a body giving forth infinite light and love. But Albion’s ‘self-glorying and pride’ traps him in ‘Opakeness’; he gives forth nothing and does not love, denying his kinship with the ‘little ones’ he destroys. Furiously forging, Los champions those ‘little ones’ like Jesus in Matthew 18.5–6 and Mark 9.42. Like the Son in Paradise Lost (III.237),37 Los cries to the self-glorying father: ‘on me turn all thy fury!’. Albion is glad to do so. He calls upon his perennial ministers of evil, ‘Hand & Hyle’, to sacrifice Los/ Christ as they have slain the Twenty-Four Eternals (Cathedral Cities) on Druid London Stone (J42:47–51). As Milton’s punitive Father-God damns humanity for ingratitude (PL II.97–8), Albion destroys his children because of their ‘ingratitude to me, to me their benefactor’ (J42.53–4). Cathedral cities react to this onslaught by raging against fallen Albion and this rage afflicts them. Like Luvah in Chapter One (J7:30–8), Oxford groans in a furnace and Winchester groans in ‘his den & cavern’ (J42:58–9). When trapped in the state of Ulro/Satan, cathedral cities worship Rahab/Vala (the virgin goddess of war) crying: ‘Come up, build Babylon’ (J42:63). But dehumanizing Ulro is not the only reality. In their ‘Human majestic Forms’, the Twenty-Four try to curb their raging Spectres ‘as with iron curbs’, feebly enquiring after Jerusalem (J42:66–70). In the marginal design, seven naked human forms perch upon one another, uncomfortably twisting upwards to a cluster of grapes, like struggling branches of the vine that is Christ in John 15.5 (P197). Like disciples in Gethsemane, the Eternals sleep upon their watch (J42:72), longing in exhaustion for the apocalyptic ‘morning of the grave’, the Parousia that will deliver them from Spectres. As they cry, ‘pity the watchers!’ they may be like Enoch’s erotic angels, the Watchers whose sexual bliss with the ‘fair daughters of men’ (Genesis 6.4)38 engendered destructive giants like Albion (J42:65–74). 36

See the discussion of Plate 35 above. Christ cries: ‘on me let thine anger fall!’. 38 This story is more fully told in 1 Enoch 6–17 which was not fully translated until 1821; an abridged version, however, was published in the Monthly Magazine in 1801. The Antiquaries 37

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Los places his furnaces around Albion’s Druid altars, building what he thinks is a protective ‘Mundane Shell’. (The ‘Mundane Shell’ exists both out in the cosmos and within each human being.) Unfortunately, this potentially redemptive structure gets co-opted by Vala (J42:75–81). The Eternals see their internal Zoas ‘rising up poisonous against Albion’, a conflict which prevents Albion’s journey through all ‘Four Complexions’ (J43:1–5), a term Boehme uses to describe different aspects of what we call the personality (FC). These internal conflicts have social and political consequences. Erdman observes (1954: 482) that fragmented Albion blockades America with his ships ‘of the western shore’ (J43:6) in response to Napoleonic decrees, and links the murder of Tharmas in Mexico (J43:7) with the Spanish executions of insurgents there in 1811 and 1813. Stevenson suggests that Tharmas might be an Aztec sacrificial victim (S736). Druid violence permeates history (J43:1–9). The exhausted Eternals call upon Albion’s god to deliver them, but that god is the deified abstraction of Ulro, a god who does not participate in human deliverance. As Christ ‘made himself of no reputation’ and became ‘obedient unto death’ (Phil.2.6–8) participating in humanity to transform it, so must Eternals demean themselves to deliver Jerusalem and Albion (J43:9–11). Only Los embraces this great task, furiously rousing his flaccid compeers like a revivalist preacher. Los rages against the separation of humanity from God and the binary idiocies of a heaven founded upon the torments of hell. ‘Swell’d & bloated’ generalizations, like ‘Moral Law’, oppress the Minute Particulars of ‘the Divine Humanity’. Suspicion poisons speech and friendship. Christ’s Bacchic vineyard, offering spiritual and sensual joys (depicted in the naked human forms clustering with luscious grapes), is ‘condemn’d by Law’, the Law that slays the Divine Lamb. Los cries out against the corruption of ‘Hunting and War’, the ‘sources of Life in Eternity’ (J43:12–31). In Eternity, ‘Hunting and War’ are not bad things; creative conflict animates the Divine Body. In Eternity death is not terminal. In Eden/Eternity (as in Valhalla) truth-seeking soldiers love their worthy opponents. Infinitely translucent, they die to rise, transfigured by loving women (J43:39–44). In Ulro’s hypocritical world, by contrast, they make wars of death: Los castigates ‘the pretence of liberty’ that destroys the liberty it claims to protect, such as the suspension of habeas corpus in Britain in 179939—and the ‘pretence of religion’ that sanctions violence and oppression (J43:35–6). He flashes back to the carnage in Peor in Numbers 31, lamenting as Israelites destroy the weeping Moabite and Midianite armies of Balaam (J43:31–9). Like Paine in The Age of Reason, Blake abhors the violence of discussed this book during Blake’s apprenticeship. See Minutes of the Society of Antiquaries, Vol. 13: 1773–74, 16 December 1773; 10 March 1774. (Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, London). 39 For more about the political situation, see Erdman (1954: 327).

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Moses.40 Midian was Abraham’s son by Keturah (Gen.25.1–2) and Moab his great-nephew (Gen.19.37), but Moses commands his warriors to destroy these people, partly because their beautiful daughters inspire intermarriage, tainting Israel’s purity (Num.25.1, 18). Los sees Oshea (Joshua) and Caleb fighting (J43:37). (Their terrible feud, which is not mentioned in the Bible, might refer to Blake’s fractured friendship with Thomas Stothard.41) In Blake’s geopolitical cosmos, ancient and modern personalities and nations overlap; thus the English are spreading Israelite violence. ‘Are these Jerusalem’s children?’, Los wonders (J43:45–7). Druid giants like ‘Hand & Scofield’ grind little ones into bread. British soldiers attack their Saxon brothers as in the 1813 Battle of Leipzig (Erdman 1954: 466). Los protests against a world in which ‘man is by nature the enemy of man’ (J43:49–54). Prophetic Los cries that Albion’s Tree of Moral Law obliterates forgiveness in favor of the ‘artificial Riches of the Canaanite / Like Lakes of liquid lead’ (J43:62–3).42 Like Isaiah prophesying the judgment of Idumea (Isa.34.9–10), Los sees the land as pits of ever-burning bitumen (S708). Albion’s Druid Wicker Man (in which human captives were burnt alive as sacrifices (D447)) obliterates the chapel Christ mythically built at Glastonbury.43 Druidic demonstration annihilates Canaanites, Amalekites, and Moabites, all children of Jerusalem (J43:59–68). Los calls to his good ‘Friends & Brothers’ seeking to free them from the theological ‘infection of Sin & stern Repentance’, yet he fears the vengefulness intrinsic to the disease of sin (J43:71–9). Los pauses. The Eternals stand pale around the ‘reared Rocks of Albions Sons’. And then they rise (J43:80–2). They rise, winged ‘in love sublime’, surrounding Albion ‘with kindest violence’ to bear him back ‘thro’ Los’s gate to Eden’ (J44:1–2). But they are bearing Albion ‘against his will’ and he stubbornly resists, rolling his ‘Starry Wheels’, the mechanistic world view and military-industrial complex that obliterates emanation and forgiveness. Those wheels turn the lifegiving light and air of the Eternals into ‘Opake cliffs ’of black despair’, and the sea which could connect Albion to all the world becomes a boundless and bottomless barrier (J44:5–6). Albion will not change. In love the ‘Family Divine’ hovers around this exemplar of petrified humanity who chooses to stay trapped in Ulro’s material world of jealousy and fear (J44:18–20). 40 Paine emphatically castigates Moses at Peor, recoiling from the Lord’s supposed order to ‘kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man . . . but all the women-children that have not known a man . . . keep alive for yourselves’. He declares: ‘it is impossible to find a greater [detestable villain] than Moses’ (1792: II.114). Of course Blake’s Christianity opposes Paine’s Deism. Paine’s God is ‘The Almighty Lecturer’, a great architect, geometer, and mechanical engineer (I.74–6). 41 For more about that misunderstanding see Bentley (2001: 292–308). Blake thought his friend (whom he had known since his apprenticeship) stole not only a lucrative commission, but also the idea and structure for a painting and engraving of Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims. 42 A twenty-first-century reader might liken these lakes to oil fields. 43 Over 3000 internet websites mention this legend.

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Being in Ulro means becoming ‘Sexual . . . and Vegetated and Born’, reminiscent of the ‘Gnostic’ fall into matter.44 Though Albion’s belief (‘in his Chaotic State of Sleep’) that ‘Satan & Adam & the whole world was Created by the Elohim’ (J27) is like ‘Gnostic’ ideas Blake may have encountered in Priestley’s Early Opinions Concerning Jesus Christ (I.139-67),45 this does not indicate that Blake is a Gnostic.46 Albion’s ideas are symptoms of his disease, not of Blake’s beliefs. ‘Gnostic’ notions of an indifferent creator and a dualistic world view blight Eden and Beulah. ‘Uncircumcised Vegetation’ (a purely material world view in which there is no emanation) forms a spectrous ‘Sexual Machine, an Aged Virgin Form’ which separates spirit from matter. This dualism spreads throughout Britain and in Erin (or Ireland), land of an exalted Virgin Mother (J44:21–7). When true human insight occurs (when you ‘turn your eyes inwards’, J44:41), flesh and spirit commingle in bliss, like Jerusalem and Vala in ‘the time of love’ (J20). A golden serpent morphs from a vine in Plate 44’s design (perhaps akin to the friendly one in Plate 9). Albion’s compassionate Eternals, anesthetized by the jealous love equated with religion, fall into ‘the Slumbers of Death’ (J44:27–35). As they fade, they cast Los as Elijah, imbuing him with ‘Prophecy’ to ‘Watch over them’ until Jesus reappears (J44:29–31). As they doze, Blake/Los calls to us and to them: ‘turn your eyes inward!’ to open the ‘World / Of Love & Harmony’, the luminous centre which need not be darkened. Expanding ‘thy ever lovely Gates’ allows your circumference to open into Beulah and Eden (J44:40–1). This exhortation rouses Bath’s benevolence. Now Bath faintly speaks ‘in soft gentle tears’ (J44:44–45:2). Erdman identifies benevolent Bath as Richard Warner, an eloquent priest bravely preaching peace to his congregation in Bath from 1804 to 1808 when most Anglican churchmen firmly supported war with France (1954: 476–81).47 This ‘merciful Son of Heaven’ presents a beautifully balanced argument, more elegantly constructed than Jerusalem’s similar plea for forgiveness in Chapter One (J20–2). The character’s rhetoric has something in common with the rhetoric of Reverend Warner, who shapes his arguments with lists of three points, or attributes. In Jerusalem Bath invokes unfallen Albion (greatly admired, with ‘benevolent countenance’, ‘open & undisguised’) as an example to the Eternals, crying: ‘In Selfhood we are nothing . . . mildness is nothing; the greatest mildness we can use is incapable and nothing’ (J45:4–15). Bath’s remarks about Africa’s freedom from fetters (J45:19–24) may allude to abolition of the British slave trade (Erdman 1954: 429). But Albion’s mind-forged manacles, as Los discovered in his interior journey (J31), ‘are woven with his 44 ‘Gnostic’ is a loose term, referring to many kinds of early heterodox Christianity. The ‘Gnostics’ never called themselves Gnostics (Conversation with Mark Edwards, Christ Church, 19 October 2005). 45 Discussed by Stevenson (1957: 122); Raine (1968: II.13–15). 46 Pace Raine, Van Meurs, Nuttall, and Fisch, who discuss Blake’s ‘Gnosticism’. 47 Warner also wrote poetry in praise of Freemasonry (Hills 1916: 356–63).

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life’ (J45:25). Albion needs more than a political alteration; he needs spiritual and psychological reconfiguration as well. Bath calls on God to descend and urges the bard of Oxford to help,48 giving him ‘leaves of the Tree of Life’ and ideas from Warner’s sermon, War Inconsistent with Christianity (P204).49 Seventeen cathedral cities conjoin with Bath as Oxford offers the leaves that are ‘for the healing of the nations’ in Revelation 22.2. Albion does not respond; his Western Gate (the circumference and tongue) is closed. He cannot speak; he cannot emanate. Oxford trembles as he begs Albion to repose (as Jerusalem does) in Beulah. There he may be freed from his Error by the apocalyptic ‘Harrow of Shaddai’, the divine implement that can weed out his Selfhood. But Albion does not want to cut away what occludes his heart. Again he turns away and Oxford faints in dismay in the arms of the devoted Eternals (J46:25–6)—as Albion’s mechanistic laws and vengeful notions of atonement destroy ‘happy Jerusalem, the Bride and Wife of the Lamb’ (J46:27–8). Again furnaces bellow and roar (J46:20–2), as they did when Los first launched his rescue attempt in Plate 42. Plate 46’s flaming chariot may be one of the apocalyptic visions from which Albion recoils. He dozes, slumped beside a slumbering Emanation. Plate 33’s human-headed lion-bulls are now harnessed with serpents as they haul their passengers into what looks like hell. This grotesque chariot vision can be seen in many ways by many readers (P203–4). Wicksteed sees this as Time’s vegetative chariot, its three serpents representing past, present, and future (1954: 185–7). Erdman casts the male passenger as Jehovah (1974: 320). A Russian artist, Sergei Efimovitch, thinks the harnessed Zoas look like a bifurcated Karl Marx pulling cultures into the hell of revolutionary violence engendered by inhuman materialism.50 Paley likens the sleeping figures to Pluto and Persephone, attended by griffins resembling the Hindu Garuda (1983: 109–10, 340), while Doskow (1982: 91) sees the design as a mutation of the fiery chariot in Blake’s watercolor print, ‘God Judging Adam’ (c294/pl.1390), a depiction of the punitive God from which we are finally freed. No two people see this design in exactly the same way; like Blake, we enter into its journey when we imaginatively interpret it. From between two horns on the lion heads the hand of a ghostly scribe takes a pen or burin. Has the Blake-scribe from Plate 41 morphed into an apocalyptic Beast? Are we doing likewise? Shall we become what we behold? Though Los and the Eternals try to transform Albion, his sleeping sickness is contagious, spreading violence and fear throughout history and the world.

48 Blake calls Edward Marsh, a Wadham undergraduate, ‘the bard of Oxford’ in his 27 January 1804 letter to Hayley (P204). 49 Citing Erdman (1951: 197–223). 50 Sergei was a friend and colleague at the Urals University in Ekaterinburg, perusing Jerusalem in April 2002.

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SCENE SIX: CYCLES OF VIOLENCE (47:1 – 48:12) Action now flows from the Thames to battles (like those waged by Napoleon) ‘on the Rhine and Danube’,51 flashing back to the image of Luvah’s war-spectre tearing from Albion’s loins in this chapter’s opening ballad (J27:37–46). Jerusalem and Vala howl as they did in Plate 5, but here we see Vala trampling Jerusalem in a stony cloud (flecked with gold in the original Copy E) while the twisted figure of a man (whose legs are impossibly proportioned) turns from them. This may be Los, becoming deformed by what he beholds.52 Apocalyptic agonies unfold. Soon Jerusalem’s captive children will howl, burnt alive in the ‘Wicker Man of Scandinavia’53 as Albion’s Druid sons trumpet forth to war in the ancient ‘scythed chariots of Britain’ (J47:6–11). Blake recoils as he sees the horrid co-dependence of ‘vengeance & enmity’, the ‘Punisher’ enslaved ‘to his Victim’s Spectre’ in a never-ending cycle of violence. As John is commanded (Rev.1.11, 19) so does a divine voice direct Blake: ‘Shudder not, but write’ (J47:16). The ‘hand of God’ guides Blake’s burin as Albion murmurs his last words: ‘Hope is banished from me’ (J47:17). ‘The merciful Saviour’ again appears, cradling Albion in his arms. A divine carpenter, he builds Albion a cosmic ‘couch of repose’ pillared with the sixteen biblical books endorsed by Swedenborg:54 ‘ . . . the Five books of the Decalogue: the books of Joshua & Judges/ Samuel, a double book, & Kings, a double book, the Psalms & Prophets/ The Four-fold Gospel and Revelations’. Albion sleeps on his tomb, protected, but not awakened by this visionary structure (J48:8–11). Jerusalem is dying within him.

SCENE SEVEN: REDEMPTIVE ERIN, A TERRIBLE S E P A R A T I O N ( 4 8 : 1 3– 50:30) We segue from the cosmic couch to ‘Earth’s central joint’ beneath ‘the graves’, a liminal space beneath death and life, contiguous with Beulah (J48:13–17). In this place transformation can happen. Beulah’s daughters marvel as the Eternals’ Emanations coinhere in ‘Maternal Love’ to form ancient Erin, who is merciful and wise (J48:26–30). She painfully awakens Jerusalem, extricating her from Albion’s stony bosom, in an attempt to protect her and Beulah’s Austerlitz and Jena (1805, 1806) were fought in lands through which these rivers flow (S760). 52 Vala’s form resembles Blake’s early rendering of a figure from Michelangelo’s ‘Last Judgment’ (c50/pl.46). 53 Stevenson notes that the druidic ‘Wicker Man’ was not Scandinavian (S760). 54 See Bentley (1954: 264–5); Paley (1985: 28). Though a Lutheran, Swedenborg omits the Epistles. 51

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daughters from the religion of chastity and war. As pensive Erin engineers this redemption, she laments in one of the poem’s longest speeches (J48–50), describing the physical and political horrors created by Albion’s fall, and offering the hope of healing (J48:54–49:51). Heart and loins must both be circumcised if Albion is to be freed from jealousy, fear, and erotic repression; his ‘terrible surfaces’ must be removed (J49:42–50:9). Erin separates Jerusalem from Albion to prevent her from becoming ‘the proud Virgin-Harlot, Mother of War!’ (J50:10–16). Jerusalem, too, is getting infected by Albion’s social disease. When the scene begins Beulah’s daughters are weeping as sleeping Jerusalem sinks into the closed human heart (J48:25). But wise Erin provides a possibility for human awakening. ‘The Spaces of Erin’ (which we encountered in Plate 11) are spaces where destruction and death can open into creation and redemption; Erin, mercifully, can shape time and space. She weaves a ‘Moment of Time’ into a jewelled rainbow, a substance both matter and energy, spanning 8500 years and studded with doors into Eden (like Los’s gate) (J48:31–6). These doors appear every 200 years, like the conjunction of trigons in astrology, when the earth moves from a relationship with one elemental constellation (e.g. water or Pisces) to another (e.g. fire or Aries).55 When Erin opens an atom she does not unleash radioactive destruction (like the nuclear Trinity at Los Alamos56); she fills the war-space of Rephaim (site of the first biblical genocide) with mercy. A time of fury can become an age of forgiveness; destruction can lead to creation. Attended by her chorus in Beulah, Erin mourns beside Albion’s sixteenpillared tomb. Los sees this happening in his seventh furnace and he sees the ‘finger of God’ upon that apocalyptic furnace, preparing a place for Jerusalem (J48:44–5), like the place Christ prepares through his passion in John 14.2–3. Writhing in pain Jerusalem bursts from the tomb of Albion’s bosom, but hers is not a spiritually risen body. She struggles, severed from her physical relationship with Albion. Beulah’s kind daughters receive her in their arms (J48:46–51). Erin laments, weeping for Albion and longing to find ‘a Refuge’ for the children soon to be sacrificed in ‘the wrath of Albion’s Law’. She calls her daughters to lament with her ‘for Og & Sihon’ who dwell in Albion and America as well as among ‘the Lakes of Ireland’ and in the Holy Land (J48:59–64). In Numbers 21, Deuteronomy 2 and 3, Joshua 9, Nehemiah 9, and in Psalms 135 and 136 Og of Bashan and Sihon, King of the Amorites, are prototypical enemies of Israel, threatening God’s chosen people. The Israelites John Dee wrote about the Trigon shift (or ‘Grand Copulation’) from Pisces to Aries in 1583; another shift happened in the 1780s (Woolley 2002: 158–60). While creating Jerusalem Blake became friends with John Varley, an astrologer (Bentley 2001: 368–79). 56 Robert Oppenheimer named the first atomic bomb ‘Trinity’ in 1945. 55

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perpetrate their first genocide upon them, ‘utterly destroying the men and the women and the little ones of every city’ (Deut.2.34, 3.6). (As mentioned earlier (Part II, Chapter 2, ‘Scene Two: The Triumph Of Vala’), Reuben (coinherent with warmongering Hand) took Bashan for his territory (J34).) Erin mourns that Albion’s giants have forgotten they ‘dwelt in Shiloh’, a man and land of peace in Genesis 49.10. She mourns for the burning cities, for little ones burning in the Wicker Man. She mourns for human-divine fragmentation. (J49:1–14). She cries as the ‘Polypus of Death!’ (Albion’s materialistic religion of sacrifice, propitiation, and chastity) obliterates Eden’s ‘Garden of God’ in ‘fury and war’; dualistic materialism (the Spectre haunting Europe) separates the cosmos, continents, and internal organs from humanity (J49:15–24); selfish chastity murders the Divine Humanity ‘who chargeth his Angels with folly!’ (as in Job 4.18 (J49:31)). Erin sees that ‘Visions of Eternity’ (like Blake’s) are shrunken by ‘narrowed’ ideas of space and time (J49:21–3). She laments the Lockean limitations (Witke 1986: 114–15, 134–5)57 constricting Eyes, Ears, Nostrils, and Tongues (as Reuben’s are contracted in this chapter’s third scene), an ‘Uncircumcision’ occluding spiritual and sensual perception throughout the world (J49:3 3–43). Reflecting this diminution, a naked human form vegetates in the marginal design. However, that which occludes perception and love (i.e. Selfhood) can be cut away. Passing through the Erythrean (a redemptive sea58) can remove petrified surfaces, turning the opake translucent, spreading forgiveness as Selfhood is annihilated. Then Albion’s children can enter ‘into Jerusalem’s courts & into Shiloh’, who is ‘the masculine Emanation of France’, Britain’s perennial opponent (J49:47–8). (Remember: Emanation can be both masculine and feminine.) Selfhood creates the false concept of ‘enemy’; self-annhilation obliterates that misconception. Erin rouses Albion’s ‘vegetating sons’ to build a curtained (and thus permeable) wall for America’s shore, to ‘rush on’, protected by a blessed sun and moon in Jehovah’s forgiveness,59 to be in the Divine Body, seeing it ‘before, behind, above, beneath, around’ as the Lord bends ‘the laws of cruelty to peace’ (J49:49–55). When the ‘Laws of Cruelty’ are bent to peace, Jehovah gives the prototypical enemies of Israel, ‘Og and Anak’60 the honorable job of guarding those laws. Og and Sihon (Num.21) no longer fight with Joshua and Caleb; they give their power to them (J49:55–60). This power-sharing reconfigures ‘the Body of Moses’ (the text attributed to him); it becomes, like the Divine Body, a body 57 Blake expresses his concern about these limitations in ‘There is no Natural Religion’ (1788) (K97). 58 In the ‘Erythrean’ Bryant conflates the Red Sea with the Indian Ocean (D128). 59 Her phrase, ‘the sun shall go before you in day’, conflates the protective Shekinah of Exodus with the blessing in Psalm 121.6 (S733). 60 The ‘Sons of Anak’, who are giants, terrify the Israelites in Numbers 13.33.

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of peace. Unfortunately, Albion’s ‘terrible surfaces’ prevent such peace from being realized. Albion’s war machine needs enemies—just as his theology needs sinners. Erin laments for those whose joyless chastity and Moral Law constructs heavens fed by the victims of hell (J49:56–64). Like Los, Erin knows these joyless consumers should not be condemned, but delivered from the state into which they have fallen, a state promoting the delusion ‘that man is by nature the enemy of man’ (J49:69). She calls her sisters to see ‘the eternal human’ walking among Ezekiel’s apocalyptic ‘stones of fire’ (Ezek.28.14)—as Albion walked with Vala in this chapter’s opening scene. Like the daughters of Vala at the end of the first chapter (J25), Erin knows that apocatastasis depends upon the perception that individuals can be delivered from fallen states (J49:65–76). She calls for Jesus to descend (J50:10). Divine vision can alter Albion’s basic assumptions and deliver him from worshipping ‘a murderous Providence’. Albion is as dead as Lazarus, and Erin cries to Christ like Mary and Martha: ‘If thou hadst been here our brother . . . had not died’ (J50:10–11; John 11.21, 32). She tells her sisters to go and meet the Lord as Martha did, while she waits at home like Mary (S768). She is also concerned for Jerusalem, trapped in Albion (as Lazarus is within his tomb). When she delivers Jerusalem from Albion’s cliffs, Erin hopes to prevent her from becoming, like Vala, ‘the proud Virgin-Harlot! Mother of War!’ (J50:1–17). When they hear this, Beulah’s winged daughters shudder, resting in Los’s apocalyptic furnace. They see Albion’s sons as stars, descending and rising from the sea of death.61 Then Erin’s redemptive rainbow encloses those starry wheels. ‘Expanding on wings’, the daughters call more hopefully than they did at the end of Chapter One: ‘Come then, O Lamb of God & take away the remembrance of sin!’. Here they echo Ephesians 4.26 (‘let not the sun go down upon your wrath’) as they sing: ‘to let the Sun go down, in remembrance of the Sin is a Woe & a Horror!’ (J50:27–8). Forgiveness can reconfigure memory. In the design beneath the chorus’s words (J50i) a monstrous triple-headed king, from which four twisted forms emerge in fire, perches at the sea’s edge. This mutant figure has been seen in many ways. Doskow calls him ‘the Satanic threefold accuser’ (1982: 104), a form of Hand on Dover’s cliffs with Newton, Locke, and a double-headed Bacon emerging from him; Paley thinks this is a parody of Jesus creating Eve in Plate 35 (P210). Erdman sees him as a sevenfold ‘hornless . . . human version of the apocalyptic beast’ (1974: 329). I think this rational Beast is also a version of Jerusalem’s triple headed GogMagog giant (J98:52), informed by Revelation 20.8 and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History (1911: 20–1). The twisted forms ripping from his splotched bosom might also be mutating Zoas, spiraling into the wrath-fire which drives their deadly Starry Wheels. Planets shudder in a cracking apocalyptic sky; a 61 In Revelation 9.2 a star/angel opens the bottomless pit. For more on angelmorphic stars, see Farrer (1964: 147).

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second sun streams with blood.62 The rock upon which the fragmenting giant perches can be Dover and/or Patmos. Beulah’s daughters’ final words (‘Come then, O Lamb of God’ (J51:30)) are reminiscent of Revelation’s ending: ‘Come Lord Jesus’ (Rev.22.20). Divine help is needed: the rescue attempts (by Erin, by Los, by the Eternals) have not succeeded.

INTERVAL (51) We have now moved through several attempts to rescue Albion (and Jerusalem) from the depredations of Moral Law, disseminated by warring Israelite Druids. We have met the Eternals, angelmorphic cathedral cities roused by Los to help in this great task, but we see that even with the concerted help of angels, cities, and human beings, Albion cannot be moved from Selfhood to life in the Divine Body unless he wants to be—and he does not want to be. Jerusalem will be destroyed if she stays trapped in the sleep of death in Albion’s bosom, so Erin extricated her from that baleful context. Of course this additional separation from the feminine divine does not help Albion; his troubles will only increase. Vala, the Spectrous Selfhood, and the Druid sons can now do more harm than they did before, coinhering not only with warlike Israelites but, as we shall see in Chapter Three, with Deists also. Violence, oppression, and repression will continue to spread.

Plate 51 In Plate 51 smoky fires burn around three figures (labeled Vala, Hand, and Scofield in a plate in the Fitzwilliam Museum63) in what might be a dungeon of Deism. As Paley notes, the shaven Scofield (Blake’s accuser) suggests either a convict or a madman (P211). Is Blake projecting his own fears onto these figures? Reasonable critics thought Blake was mad, and those called mad (like Richard Brothers) could be incarcerated. Blake had been in danger of being incarcerated for sedition by the Duke of Richmond at his trial in 1804. Is Blake using the figure of Hand to thrust his judge into prison? Hand’s posture of despair echoes that of the Albion/Urizen figure in Plate 41. He is in the hell of spectrous Selfhood. Vala, slumped and shadowy on a dark throne, gets no joy from her spiked crown and French fleur-de-lys sceptre, glowing with gold. Her tiara resembles the threefold crown in the previous plate, identified by Hagstrum as ‘an 62 63

This skyscape resembles Joel 2.30. It is not so labeled in Copy E at Yale.

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adaptation of the venerable English crown of that shape’ (1964: 29). English and French imperialism, like English and French Deism, merge in the figure of Vala, who rises hermaphroditic throughout Chapter Three. As was discussed in ‘Dramatis Personae’ (Part I, pp. 59–60), Vala’s character may be shaped by Blake’s response to the French Goddess of Reason, enthroned in Notre Dame. The smoky image of Vala in Plate 51 might also be akin to the goddess who appeared at Robespierre’s Feast of the Supreme Being in 1794, an event designed to eradicate Christianity. As effigies denigrating the ancien régime burned, a smoky goddess of Reason rose, ‘ominously blackened by the flames’ (Erdman 1954: 418). Blake’s Deist goddess perpetuates the violence which Reason is supposed to alleviate. Deism, according to Blake, engenders yet another form of ‘Religion hid in War’. When infected by Albion’s Moral Law and jealous fears, even Golgonooza grows destructive. Throughout disjointed Chapter Three calamities intensify. Albion’s disease infects Los and nearly separates the Eternals from humanity. Jerusalem, maddened in the mills, can barely perceive the Saviour she loves. War rages globally. Vala’s fallen daughters delight in the blood of the slain. Los builds intrepidly, but his work perpetuates the horror he seeks to eradicate.

3 ‘To the Deists’—Calamities Amplify THE PREFACE (52) Blake’s address ‘To the Deists’ is emblazoned stage right with the words: ‘Rahab is an Eternal State’. In the Old Testament Rahab is a harlot (Josh.2, 6) and a primeval beast (Ps.89.10; Isa.51.9). Here she embodies the dehumanizing way of being that fosters the fury and war Albion espoused in the poem’s very first scene, and this way of being ruins the world. Throughout Chapter Two Reuben (who can also appear as Albion’s son, Hand) lusted after beautiful Tirzah, who is conjoined with Rahab (J34:51–4): both are contained in Vala. In Chapter Two Rahab was called ‘the System of Moral Virtue’ animating Satan’s dreadful Mill (J39:3–11), the site of the mechanistic cosmology of Bacon, Newton, and Locke (J15:9–20). In Chapter Three we shall see how Rahab/Vala and the empirical Bacon–Newton–Locke trinity meld to form a self-enclosed hermaphrodite dragon, worshipped by deluded Deists. Like his Jews, Blake’s Deists coinhere with warrior Druids. Deism emerged from a desire to ameliorate religious violence and promote toleration,1 but Blake sees that the Deist worship of reason can promote more violence than the creeds it criticizes. Reason can dehumanize.2 Newton and Locke may discount the notion of eternal damnation (Porter 2003: 359), but their work does not promote the forgiveness and the respect for Minute Particularity in which Blake’s human-divine culture flourishes. In ‘the Saviour’s Kingdom’ people from many cultures participate in prophecy, revelation, and divine vision, and all require continual forgiveness, for (according to Blake) ‘Man is born a Spectre . . . & must continually be changed’ (J52). Our poet is not unlike the 1 Deists like Voltaire and Tom Paine decried the infamies of oppression and war perpetrated in the name of God. A Deist precursor, Lord Herbert of Cherbury (the poet George Herbert’s brother), sought to promote toleration when outlining truths common to all religions in his De Veritate (1624). 2 Since the word was coined in 1795, millions have been slaughtered in the name of ‘ideology’. In the second part of his Age of Reason (written as he awaited execution), Paine observes that political ideas can promote as much violence as ‘the intolerant spirit of Church persecutions’ (II.100).

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epistle writer (1 John 1.8) who declares: ‘If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.’ The forgiveness of sins (1 John 1.9) animates the fibres of love connecting each with all (as indicated by the song Jesus sings in plate 4:8–20). All are fallible, and all are loved. Here in Plate 57 Blake speaks in the voice of Paul in Acts 14.15 when proclaiming: ‘We are men of like passions’ (J52), including misguided Deists in this passionate likeness. According to Blake, the Deists’ Greco-Roman rationalism is ‘a remnant of Druidism’ (J52), an idea against which Tom Paine would not have argued, for his ‘Origin of Freemasonry’ asserts that Druid wisdom informed Pythagoras (and perhaps Zoroaster also) (1945: 832–4).3 Blake felt that Deist philosophy, assuming intrinsic righteousness, does not foster the forgiveness essential to healthy souls and societies. Any religion (such as established Christianity) promoting vengeance and violence is the religion of Satan. Blake’s prose exhortation ends with the words: ‘the Religion of Jesus, forgiveness of Sin, can never be the cause of a War . . . The Glory of Christianity is . . . To Conquer by Forgiveness’ (J52). Blake lambasts Voltaire, Rousseau, Gibbon, and Hume because they ‘charge the Spiritually Religious with Hypocrisy’ (J52). Voltaire (1694–1788) used wit and reason to promote freedom of thought and religious toleration, but had little use for vision and/or revelation. He befriended the warmonger Frederick II and was a guest in his Prussian palace. Like many French Deists he became a Freemason.4 (Though beardless, witty, and French, Voltaire is akin to Urizen.) Rousseau (1712–1778), whose works celebrate liberty and feeling, has something in common with Luvah, walled up in an emotional furnace throughout most of Jerusalem. Rousseau’s paranoia destroyed his friendship with David Hume, among others. He placed his newborn children in a foundling home and finally married their mother ‘before Nature’ (in 1768).5 Gibbon’s love for Imperial Rome and his argument that Christian barbarism destroyed Roman glory (in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–88) (1977: 283–91)) disgusts Blake, who equates Jesus with the human imagination and calls the Holy Ghost ‘an Intellectual Fountain’. Though Blake condemns the papacy and predestination in poetry, painting, and prose,6 he here defends both Roman Catholic monks and Calvinist Methodists against Deist denigration.

3 As mentioned in Part 1, Chapter 5, ‘Antiquarians, Druids, and Freemasons’, Milton makes a similar assertion in Areopagitica, as does Ashmole in his Theatricum. 4 For more about Voltaire’s relationship with Frederick, see Fraser (2000: 45–8, 80–1, 140–7, 253–61). Voltaire was accompanied by Benjamin Franklin at his induction in the Masonic Lodge Les Neuf Souers (Hamill & Gilbert 1998: 65). 5 See Durant (1967: 210–15); Rousseau (1796: 313–16). 6 Blake paints spectrous popes in Europe and in Night Thoughts; he criticizes Calvin in Milton (K507) and in his ‘Annotations’ to Swedenborg’s Divine Providence (K132, 133).

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He particularly supports George Whitefield, whose enthusiastic theatrical preaching converted thousands in America and in Britain. Chapter Three’s preface ends with a ballad wherein a pacifist Grey Monk of Charlemagne (an anachronistic Franciscan?) is tortured by Deist inquisitors7 named Voltaire and Gibbon. Though Voltaire inveighed against religious war, his works were venerated by revolutionaries who slaughtered thousands of innocent believers. ‘Moral Law’, divorced from beatitude, destroys the ‘Image of the Lord’ throughout history. Blake groups Voltaire, Rousseau, and Gibbon with imperialist generals: ‘Titus, Constantine, Charlemaine’ (Titus destroyed Jerusalem in AD 70). Beneath the roots of a barren tree, the ballad’s final verse proclaims that ‘a Sigh is the Sword of an Angel King’. The martyr’s woe releases arrows ‘from the Almighty’s Bow’ (J52). That spiritual sword and those arrows differ ontologically from the corporeal ammunition launched by Titus, Charlemagne, Napoleon—or the Duke of Richmond. When dozing in the Deist ‘Sleep of Ulro’ humanity cannot enjoy creative spiritual warfare or the bliss of forgiveness.

S C E N E O N E: I N T E N S I F I E D F A L L , LOS INFECTED! (53:1 – 58:20) Who is she that dozes upon the bright yellow sunflower floating on a dark sea in Plate 53? Wicksteed sees her as embodying ‘the Vegetative Universe’ (P213) while Erdman identifies her as Vala (E332) and others call her Rahab (P213). None of these identifications is incorrect. I think this figure can be seen as a composite Emanation, a depiction of Jerusalem overshadowed by Vala/Rahab, who is trying to control the vegetative (or material) world. Vala drapes Jerusalem with her blue veil in Plate 32’s design and Jerusalem is pictured dozing at least thrice previously (J2i, 23i, 37i). The figure adorned with a double papal tiara, surmounted by fleur-de-lys of gold, is likely to be Vala; but she could also be Jerusalem who, when wedded to her divine bridegroom, is the queen of heaven, the erotic body of an inclusive antinomian church. The light hovering behind her is like the transformative light pulsing between the angels in Blake’s painting of Christ’s sepulchre (c500/pl.603), which in turn resembles the light illuming Los’s translucent disc in Jerusalem’s frontispiece. ‘You cannot tell if this light is moving forward or backward’, observed John Monahan of the Yale Center for British Art. ‘Is it coming at you or drawing you in?’ He looked more closely at the original. ‘Maybe it’s meant to be seen both ways.’ 7 Blake writes: ‘Voltaire . . . was as intolerant as an Inquisitor’ (VLJ K615) (S739), perhaps hoisting his opponent on his own petard. See the scathing entry, ‘Inquisition’, in Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary.

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Monahan’s colleague, Adrianna Bates, had never read any of Blake’s prophetic books. She thought ‘the sleeping goddess’ was definitely surrounded by a halo, but the wing structure ominously resembled a cobra’s head. ‘Could she be a Hindu image, or even a Buddhist bodhisattva?’ Bates wondered. ‘I could see her also as the Virgin Mary or as Mary Magdalene. Did Blake think religions could merge?’ Witke sees this image as Blake’s rendition of Berkeley’s critique of Egyptian Isis, the supreme divinity of impersonated nature (1986: 140), while Antony Blunt suggests that Blake’s design may be informed by an image in Moor’s Hindu Pantheon (1959: 38) published by Joseph Johnson in 1810. There Blake could have read about Kali, continually destroying, continually creating, ‘the active energy of all-renewing Time . . . the iron-sceptred goddess’ thriving on human sacrifice (Moor 1810: 145–7). While the winged woman sleeps, ‘the roots of Albion’s Tree’ (engendering jealousy and fear) enter ‘the Soul of Los . . . dividing him from his Emanation’ (J53:4–6), and this blights humanity and culture in a series of mutations ‘incomprehensible to the Vegetated Mortal Eye’ (J53:10–11). But if we imagine this scene as a computer game8 we can visualize how the gnarly Moral Tree spreads, infecting not only Los, but also ‘all the Children . . . Nations & People’; the toxic roots turn Los’s creative forge and sevenfold emerald furnaces into ‘Animal Lungs . . . the Animal Heart . . . the Stomach for Digestion’ (J53:10–13), disfiguring the primal cosmic man (as envisioned by Swedenborg, Boehme, and the Cabbalists).9 Los’s great task includes transforming the vegetative body (trapped in Generation)—but this grows increasingly difficult as Albion’s disease cripples the human imagination. Infected, Los rages and builds, raging around the Eternals who recline on ‘flaming Couches’. Though torn apart by the malignant roots of Albion’s tree, Los tries to keep his divine vision, to uphold ‘The Mystic Union of the Emanation in the Lord’ (J53:24), a union which is erotic as well as spiritual. Sexual ‘Generation’ can connect the Emanation to humanity, even in Hinnom’s vale, the place of child sacrifice (J53:27–9) first mentioned in Plate 15. Every living thing can emanate divine light, wearing Jerusalem who is here like Boehme’s Wisdom, the spiritual ‘Substantiality . . . which the Spirit of God putteth on as a Garment’ (TFL5.49–50). In Blake, everyone (both male and female) eventually participates in Jerusalem, who is called ‘Liberty’ (J54:5) like the liberating ‘Spirit of the Lord’ in 2 Corinthians 3.17. That liberating spirit animates the Divine Body, and when Albion tries to destroy Jerusalem he is destroying his own eternal life.

I find that asking students to imagine whole scenes as computer animation makes the text quite accessible. 9 For example, see Swedenborg’s description of the ‘Cardiac Kingdom’ of Love and his ‘Pulmonic Kingdom of Wisdom’ (DLW #381, #420). Blake owned and annotated this book. 8

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Though Los tenaciously works, he can no longer prevent Albion’s selfdestruction as he did in Chapter Two (J40). Now Albion falls, and as he does so the mildewy ‘Bacon & Newton & Locke’ Spectre rises, proclaiming: ‘I am God!’ He shows us his ‘two Wings, Voltaire, Rousseau’ (J54:15–17)—the philosophers whose bodies had been ‘translated’ like saints into the Deist pantheon in Paris in 1791 with quasi-liturgical pomp.10 Like Satan in Blake’s illustrations to Paradise Regained (c544/pl.685) the Spectre resembles God as he tempts ‘the Friend of Sinners’, exhorting him (as in Matt.4.3; Luke 4.3) to ‘turn these stones to bread’ (J54:21). He mocks the fools who ‘believe without Experiment’ (J54:22). ‘He is named Arthur’, and Blake’s King Arthur (in his Descriptive Catalogue) is a heartless Druid king, ‘a prince of the fifth century who conquered Europe and held the world in the dark age’ (K578).11 Jerusalem’s Arthur, a Druid Israelite, spreads warlike structures around Canaan, Pharaoh’s Egypt, Aram’s Syria, and around Agag, the Amalekite king chopped to bits by the prophet Samuel ‘before the Lord in Gilgal’ (I Sam.15.33).12 As fallen Albion draws his fractured Emanation (England without Britannia) into his bosom, she stretches ‘like a long serpent in the Abyss’ covering the night with ‘Dragon Wings’ in which fragmented Jerusalem and Vala appear (J54:27–31). Now ‘the Divine Vision’ does not intervene; we hear him weeping ‘in clouds of blood’, and we see disembodied grey heads (J54i). Spectrous bat-forms hover above them, like those who leave ‘the brain that won’t believe’ in Blake’s ‘Auguries of Innocence’ (25–6; K431). Action flashes back to the Eternals, depicted as human forms hovering around a globe in which Reason is separate from Desire and Pity from Wrath (J54i). In Plate 55 they interrupt their labors to meet in ‘Universal Concave’ (J55:20) which Erdman (mistakenly) feels is an error for ‘Conclave’ (E208, 811).13 They are meeting in the Mundane Shell, which is like being within the concave egg or cavern of time and space. These Eternals are polymorphic, expanding into one divine man or contracting into many, sitting in ‘the plowed furrow’ or rising high ‘upon chariots of the morning’: they can be in the earth and above it simultaneously. Their rage at the Satanic veil of sexual shame and the theology of chosenness (which seizes ‘the Sons of Jerusalem [to] plant them in one man’s loins’) shudders from the earth up, rocking

10 The American Ambassador, James Monroe, was the only foreigner allowed to attend Rousseau’s interment ceremony, a solemn procession in which members of the National Legislature paraded like priests and deacons, bearing their gospel, The Social Contract. (For a description see: www.crookedtime.org/rousseaus, accessed 15/05/2005). 11 Stevenson discusses Blake’s unromanticized King Arthur (S744). 12 King Saul took King Agag as a prisoner of war and the Lord curses Saul for not performing his commandments to ‘utterly destroy’ every living thing among the Amalekites. 13 Paley questions Erdman’s emendation (P219). In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ‘concave’ was more commonly used as a noun; it could refer to ‘the vault of heaven’ as well as any ‘hollow or cavity’ (Oxford English Dictionary).

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mountains, cities, and seas—as heavenly bodies contend contrapuntally. ‘The stars in their courses’ fight (J55:10–28) as they do in Deborah’s war song (Judges 5.20), an echo of which we heard in Plate 36. The Eternals consider separating from humanity, but finally choose to elect Seven Eyes of God, like the seven-eyed stone laid before Joshua (Zech.3.9) or the seven-eyed Lamb whose eyes are ‘the seven Spirits of God’ (Rev.5.6).14 Blake’s Eternals also name an Eighth (Los), but he hides in Albion’s forests (J55:3–35), for he is infected with fear from the toxic roots that have invaded his being. The Eternals return to their golden plow, exhorting humanity to ‘attend to the Little-Ones’ (J55:51). Apocalyptic ‘Living Creatures’ pull this plow, like the human-headed lion-bulls depicted in Plate 33. These ‘Living Creatures’, accompanied by apocalyptic trumpets, loudly condemn the dehumanizing generalizations which slot humanity’s minute particulars into social, economic, racial, sexual, and/or political categories. Generalizations occlude the naked beauty of human individuality (J55:36–64). Truth depends upon apocalyptic circumcision; the ‘vegetated surfaces’ of defense mechanisms must be cut away, so that the spirit (or Emanation) of each unique creature can be perceived and loved (J55:65–6). The exaltation of virginity prevents the commingling through which humanity becomes divine. Like the Lord in Isaiah 6.8 the Eternals (in one ‘Great Voice of Eternity’) cry: ‘Who will go forth for us & Who shall we send before our face?’ (J55.69) Unfortunately their designated prophet is blighted by Albion’s disease. As Eternals (and Albion) labour (J55, 57), Los heaves his bellows, and he chants in antiphonal frenzy with the women he now fears (J56). At first Los acknowledges the compassionate Saviour who ‘Knoweth the Infant Sorrow’ (J56:6) and echoes Isaiah 40.6 in comparing life to ‘the grass that withereth away’ (J56:7). Yet as Albion’s Tree grows in him, Los denigrates the life-giving forces of Beulah’s daughters. He can no longer resist spectrous misogyny as he did in Chapter One (J10–11). Los now calls the human form ‘the Human Vegetable’ (J56:10). The Sun no longer holds the Divine Saviour; it ‘shall be a Scythed Chariot of Britain’, Los declares. The redemptive moon-ark is now an imperial ship (J56:18–19). Like Hand and Hyle in Chapter One, Los tries to impose his will upon the daughters. Like Albion he wants to control them at their ‘Iron Reel . . . the Golden Loom of Love’ (J56:11–13). As they grieve for humanity’s diminution (J56:26–8), Los coldly declares: ‘You must my dictate obey’ (J56:31). He no longer sees that male and female, nature and humanity commingle; he no longer sees that all creatures (including worms and plants) participate in the Divine Body. He is, in a word, infected by hierarchical thinking; he is appalled that Albion has become ‘Subservient to the clods of the furrow’ (J56:36–7).

14

I discussed the names of these Eyes in Part I, p. 117.

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Terrified, Beulah’s daughters hide the Divine Vision in Plate 56 (38–40) and dance ‘to the timbrel Of War’ in 58 (2–3), growing increasingly bloodthirsty as the chapter progresses. Gripped by deadly generalization, Los vilifies all daughters, even the loyal women standing at the cross of Christ, women Blake lovingly painted for Butts in 1800 (c495/pl.571) and again in 1805 (c497/pl.600; c498/pl.601). Raging, Los turns on Albion, asking why he created a ‘Female Will’ (J56:43). The ‘Female Will’ is not intrinsic to humanity; it arises in response to the oppression engendered by Albion’s jealousy and Selfhood. Like Albion, Los is succumbing to what his fear creates. In Plate 57’s design three giant daughters enmesh the stars in vegetative fibers above a green earth where London and York are separated from Jerusalem. Cathedral cities thunder in waves as fallen Albion drives ‘the Plow of Nations’. Like the voice of God in Revelation 1.15 which ‘is as the sound of many waters’, the Great Voice of the Atlantic condemns Albion’s pathological divisions, roaring: ‘What is a Wife & what is a Harlot? What is a Church & what is a Theatre?’ (J57:19). They do not ‘exist separate’ in the Divine Body, as they do in divisive Ulro. Albion’s fatal Tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, defines things in terms of opposition: the wife and the church are good; the harlot and the theatre are profane. In Blake’s lifetime many Christians considered theatre people rogues and vagabonds. William Law (whose Boehme edition Blake praised) wrote a fierce treatise, The Absolute Unlawfulness of the Stage Entertainment Fully Demonstrated, in which ‘a Player cannot be a living member of Christ or in a true state of Grace till he renounces his profession’ (1773: 51). As Blake was creating Jerusalem an article in The Times asserted: ‘The stage has proved and will ever prove subversive of the order, peace, and purity of morals and consequently of Christianity itself.’15 Blake was a theatre-goer;16 and as a young man he was thrilled when Oliver Goldsmith (playwright, poet, man of letters) visited his master Basire (BR16).17 Theatre is an art form; Blake’s Laocoön proclaims that Christians are called to be artists (K776) and Jerusalem culminates with all living things acting ‘in visionary forms dramatic’ (J98:28). Blake’s visionary theatre honors every creative gift in every creature, helping readers to see the divinity in a harlot, a child, an actor, even a fallen king. Politics can be brotherhood (J57:10–11) when social architects build inclusive Jerusalem.

15

Cited in Brewer (1997: 333). He has very definite opinions about the merits of a boy-actor who as all the rage in London in 1805: ‘ . . . as to Real Acting it is like Historical Painting, No Boy’s Work’ (Letter to Hayley, 15 April 1805, K859). Also see BR380–2. 17 I can walk from 31 Great Queen Street to Covent Garden in about six minutes. Drury Lane is slightly farther on. Could Blake have seen David Garrick playing Lear there in 1776 or the comic villain in Jonson’s Alchemist? (Mares 1971: xiv). 16

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Albion wants nothing to do with creativity or inclusivity. Constricted by ‘Rational Philosophy’ he flees from divine vision, enflaming the Plow of Nations and maddening its Living Creatures, much as Phaeton crashes Apollo’s chariot in Greek myth and Satan maddens Palamabron’s horses in Blake’s Milton (7–8; K486–8). To Los’s horror (J56:35–7), Albion falls ‘into the Furrow’ and gets ‘Plowed in among the Dead’ (J57:13–14). The Spectre rises above ‘the Starry Plow’ while Albion flees beneath the earth to reappear on ‘the Rock of Ages’ (J57:12–16). Filled with fear, he resists forgiveness and eternal life. The Divine Vision (Jesus) opens the centre of the cosmos (of which the human soul is a microcosm) so that all can emanate, but Albion, trapped in Selfhood, resists this opening. His Druid daughters (whipped and oppressed in previous chapters) reel through London’s streets like maenads, drunk with blood, dancing with the timbrel as Miriam did when celebrating the drowning of Pharaoh’s army in Exodus 15.20 (P223), whirling like the devotees of the Goddess of Reason in Paris in 1793 (Carlyle 1933 (1837): II.313).18 Falling before the naked dancing daughters, Albion’s people shriek as they feel Druidic trepanation, ‘their Brain cut round beneath the temples’ (J58:1–8).19 War and judgment ‘bonify’ Albion’s Sons, turning them into hermaphrodite rocks; they are becoming entirely selfenclosed, incapable of commingling. Los furiously hammers, trying to break open the mathematical-philosophical hermaphrodite pictured in Plate 58, which I see as an embryonic harlot-dragon, conflating a winged pudenda20 with a miniature version of Blake’s vision of Revelation’s red dragon (S786). Feminine sexuality (the paradisiacal place of mutual forgiveness in Plate 7) has become demonized and damnable. Though infected by the Spectre’s fear, fury, and shame, Los keeps trying to create a redemptive ‘World of Generation’ from Ulro’s constrictions (J58:14–18), but Albion’s world view keeps corrupting him. Furiously forging, Los tries to uphold divine vision, while Albion’s rational spectre (like Voltaire?) destructively commingles with Luvah’s emotional one (like Rousseau?), co-dependently enclosed in the bellicose erotics of Vala and her shadowy daughters: they are forming a dragon-harlot of war.

SCENE TWO: URIZEN’ S TEMPLE ( 58:21– 59:21) Fallible Los continually seeks to redeem Albion. In his imaginative fury he gets co-opted by Urizen, a sovereign architect like the Great Architect worshipped

18 As mentioned in Part I, Chapter 2, footnote 45, Carlyle describes the nearly naked dancers ‘whirling and spinning like those Dust-vortexes, forerunners of Tempest and Destruction’ (II.313). 19 Stevenson notes that Blake would have considered such Neolithic practices Druidic (S786). 20 So seen by Keynes, Paul Miner, Paley (P223), and Erdman (1974: 333).

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by Freemasons. Like Tubal-Cain (the creative blacksmith revered in Masonic ritual), Los takes direction from the Architect, building a temple that seeks to make ‘Form out of Confusion’—in another unsuccessful attempt to help Albion and his fallen world. In this temple network, Jerusalem’s ‘Ungenerate’ sons walk; they are not in the state of Generation, not fully embodied. Urizen and Los labor surrounded by pre-creation (or post-apocalyptic) chaos (J59:10); they are creating a structure in the kind of liminal space in which initiates (Masonic, Eleusinian, Christian) can be transformed. From Los’s London forge, Urizen’s temple network spreads throughout the world, but it is a Druid network, spreading in splendour from Stonehenge. Distant ‘Great Tartary’ (the vast lands between the Urals and Manchuria) is the temple’s ‘inmost hall’ (J58:38). What looks far is near; what is large is contained by what appears small. But whatever that ‘inmost hall’ holds does not help Albion; he remains in ‘the Hermaphroditic Satanic World of rocky Destiny’, the self-enclosed gem-studded tomb of his mind.21 In this ‘Hermaphroditic World’ filled with ‘precious stones’ (J58:51–59:1) Los snatches Vala’s vegetating veil and tries to use it redemptively, forming it into a gated wall between the oak and palm ‘beneath Albion’s tomb’, the place depicted in Plate 37 (where Jesus raises Albion and/or Lazarus). Here, in Plate 58, Los’s gated wall is reminiscent of the Johannine Jesus who says ‘I am the door’, whose sheepfold protects little ones from wolves (John 10.1–10). Like Jesus, Los can turn death into life. Vala’s malignant veil ultimately becomes the life-giving ‘Mundane Shell . . . the place / Of Redemption & of awaking’ (J59:8–9). As Los builds, the Zoas (who are cathedral cities: ‘Verulam, London, York, & Edinburgh’) remain chaotic, infected with fury. Dominated by Luvah, Albion lies ‘slain in his tent’ like Holofernes, the imperialist Assyrian decapitated by chaste Judith as he laid siege to her town (J59:10–21; Judith 13–14). The feminine remains separated from the masculine, and the human from the divine.

SCENE THREE: IN CATHEDRON ’S L OOMS (59:22 – 62:42) This scene is as complex as those in some esoteric texts in which dreams, visions, and art or theatre overlap and dissolve into one another.22 In 21 The image of his gem-studded tomb may have been inspired by the engravings of Tartary tombs Blake encountered in his first months as an apprentice. There, the dead glow more luminous than the living, their grave goods including a serpentine human hermaphrodite as well as carved stones and jewels (Archaeologia 1773: pl. XIV, XVII). 22 Andreae’s Chymical Wedding, for instance, includes a play that becomes ‘reality’ and opens into a dream which becomes a vision.

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Cathedron’s looms (one of Golgonooza’s manufacturing divisions) Los is like us, a spectator for most of the scene, gazing into his fiery furnaces where he sees ‘the interior worlds’ of the looms, a cosmic factory resembling Britain’s nineteenth-century ‘Satanic mills’—as well as the ancient ‘Dungeons of Babylon’ (J60:39). There Jerusalem loses her mind, for she is losing her capacity for divine vision (J59–60). Jesus, who appears both within a song sung by slaves and also in the flesh, presents Jerusalem with a vision of his incarnation and inserts her in his birth-scene as a midwife who melds with Mary. She cradles him as a baby and can repose upon him as a man (J61–2). He is her child; he is her lover. As we have seen, time need not be linear; past, present, and future can spin, overlapping, like the wheels whirring through much of this scene. The scene opens with three spinning daughters (J59i), like the Norse Norns or Greek Fates, spinning in fires touched with gold. These daughters contain myriad women laboring in an oppressive industrial complex, like the one described in Plate 16. They work and weep, weaving many life forms (J59:30–48). As iron spindles thunder around them, they weave the veil of the Israelite tabernacle ‘of purple and scarlet and fine linen’ (Ex.35.25; J59:53–5), a veil Jesus rends when obliterating Druid Law.23 (In Eden/Eternity nothing separates the human from the divine.) Fiery clouds from ‘Albion’s Druid Temples’ rage as Luvah spreads his torments (J60:1–3). Yet Los sees the Divine Vision ‘within the furnaces’ (J60:5), walking ‘in the midst of the fire’ as one ‘like the Son of God’ walks in the Babylonian fiery furnace (Dan.3.24–5). Divine Vision is always with us, though it may not be acknowledged or perceived. Unfortunately Jerusalem can barely see Jesus for, being maddened by the whirring mills of Vala’s ‘Satanic Holiness’ (Moral Law) and the ‘Wheel of Hand’ (materialism), Jerusalem (like Los) is losing her sense of Divine Vision (J60:39–48). In the ‘Song of the Lamb’ (sung by the slaves in the mills) she hears only her own condemnation. But Jesus comes to deliver her from guilt and the mechanistic mills, guiding her in a redemptive pillar of cloud (J60:31–7). He wants to deliver her from ‘the pretended chastities of Uncircumcision’, the erotic, perceptual, and spiritual barriers erected by Albion and Vala, which destroy human–divine relationships. Jerusalem tries to perceive ‘the Divine Lamb’ and struggles against Albion’s assertion that the ‘Human Imagination . . . Divine Body’ is ‘all a delusion’, affirming that Jesus pities her even though she sins. She knows that he knows she is deluded, crazed ‘because of Albion’s death’ (J60:51–64). She is a part of Albion; and when he severs himself from Jesus, she also is disconnected.

23

See Mark 15.38; Matt.27.51; Luke 23.45; J30:40.

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But Jesus will never abandon her. He declares (Matt.28.20; J62:29): ‘Lo, I am with thee always.’ He tells Jerusalem as he tells Mary and Martha in the Lazarus story (John 11): ‘I have power to raise from death / Thy brother’ (J60:67–9). Albion is now called Jerusalem’s brother; he has also been a husband and father to her. Love relationships in the Divine Body cut across familial and social ties and taboos, yet here we see Jerusalem, trapped in Ulro/ Generation, struggling with guilt and shame. She trembles, crushed by Vala’s ‘Religion of Chastity’, but Jesus comforts her with a ‘Jehovah-Elohim’ vision of Mary, Joseph, and human–divine forgiveness (J61).24 In that vision (as we have seen) Blake reshapes Matthew’s account of Joseph’s response to Mary’s pregnancy (Matt.1.19–20). Here Mary assumes that her husband forgives as Christ forgives (though Christ is not yet born). She says: ‘I hear the voice of God / In the voice of my husband’ (J61:10), and sees her Jesus-husband ‘in furnace of fire’ (J61:13). Blake’s Joseph (visited by an angel) subverts substitutionary atonement and forgives his pregnant fiancée. The angel has shown him that forgiveness is not debt-payment, but transformation. Death, pain, and guilt can be transformed because, in the body of Christ, being crucified and rising is a continual process intrinsic to the life of expanding vision.25 ‘Continual forgiveness of sins . . . the Perpetual Mutual Sacrifice in Great Eternity’ is ‘the Covenant of Jehovah’ (J61:15–24). In forgiveness Joseph learns that his beloved ‘is with child by the Holy Ghost’ (J61:27). This may be interpreted in many ways. (When the Power of the Lord overshadowed her (Luke 1.35), Mary, like Blake’s Eternals, may have delighted in ‘cominglings from the head even to the feet’ (J69:43); such erotic comminglings might disconcert any fiancée!) When Joseph forgives her, Mary bursts into song, flowing with love into his arms, a love that spreads throughout the land (J61:28–32). Her joy waters the rivers of Eden and all the inhabitants of Mesopotamia. The first-person narrator (Blake) then appears, hearing a voice ‘among / The Reapers’ (J61:33–5), like the voice of Ruth (S795), the alien Moabite who weds Boaz, a child of Rahab.26 I would assign these lines to angelmorphic Mary. She cannot tell whether she is Jerusalem or Babylon ‘come up to Jerusalem’. The two cities are essentially the same place, just as Jerusalem and Vala are essentially one. Another voice (Jerusalem’s) replies. She still castigates herself as ‘a Harlot drunken with the Sacrifice of Idols’ but rejoices in ‘Mercy’ and ‘Divine Humanity!’. In a complex intermingling of images, Mary leans against

24 ‘Elohim’ is a plural name of God, frequently appearing in Genesis from the story of Adam through Abraham; ‘Jehovah’ is a version of the divine name revealed to Moses at Mount Horeb. God can be both myriad and singular. 25 Many thanks to Barbara Vellacott for her insight. 26 According to Matthew’s genealogy (1.5).

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Jerusalem and Jerusalem cradles the newborn Jesus, synchronically fainting ‘over the Cross and Sepulcher’ as the Divine Voice condemns ecclesiastical hierarchy and sexual constriction. ‘Every harlot was once a Virgin!’, the Voice declares (J61:39–53); in the resurrection we freely change ‘Sexual Garments’, like actors in Blake’s London, unconfined by gender.27 ‘Vala, Mother of the Body of Death’ (J62:13), is uninterested in such flexibility. She has infected the mind of Jerusalem, who (in consequence) denigrates Christ’s maternal ancestry28 (which is tantamount to denigrating herself) even while declaring: ‘in my flesh I shall see God’ (J62:8–16). In another twist, in a moment of vision, Jerusalem synchronically becomes the beloved Magdalene, beholding Christ’s spiritually risen body (J62:1–7). Turning to fallen Albion she is again like Lazarus’ sisters, echoing the words of Martha: ‘I know he shall arise at the Last Day’ (John 11.24). Jesus replies in the words of the Gospel: ‘I am the Resurrection & the Life’ (J62:18), but Blake’s Jesus does not say ‘he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live’ (John 11.25); Blake’s Jesus will revive even those who do not believe. He cannot leave Luvah and Vala ‘in the gnawing grave’ (J62:20). All are continually forgiven, as is Jerusalem in her confusion. When trapped in Deist mills she cannot see how Jesus ‘passes the limits of possibility’, bringing salvation to all humanity. Jerusalem may be degraded, starved, and imprisoned, yet Christ is always with her, even when she is hidden ‘in Vala’s cloud’ and pursued by ‘Luvah’s fires’ (J62:21–8). In Plate 62 we see a tormented giant, haloed with peacock eyes, his feet in flame, breaking through what looks like a green hill (or beryl furnace).29 Wicksteed thinks this is one of Tyburn’s victims as well as humanity trapped ‘in the process of Sexual Generation’ (1954: 213). Mitchell (1978: 212) identifies the figure as ‘the mighty angel’ in Revelation 10.1, likening the design to ‘The Angel of the Revelation’ Blake painted for Butts (c518/pl.579). Damon (1924: 472) and Doskow (1982: 122–4) see this figure as Luvah, who is, after all, an angelmorphic ‘Giant form’ (J3), fallen into fury and rising in ‘streams of blood’ across Europe and Asia (J62:31–2). The figure at his feet (like the figure of St. John in Blake’s ‘Revelation’ watercolour, c518/pl.579) could be Los, beholding ‘the Divine Vision among the flames of the Furnaces’ as well as a prophetic Blake, making a cameo appearance as he did in Plate 41. In Milton (40:22 K532) and in The Four Zoas (8:600 K356) Blake tells us he sees what John on Patmos saw. Like his Jesus, Blake is trying to fill us with forgiveness and free us from violence and fear. It may be an impossible task.

27

Audiences delighted in David Garrick’s comic cross-dressing, Sarah Siddons’ interpretation of Hamlet, and actresses in ‘breeches parts’ (McIntyre (1999: 541, 549)). 28 For a discussion of these women, see Sturrock (1992: 29–31). 29 The green is more vivid in the original.

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SCENE FOUR: HERMAPHRODITE SPECTRE RISING (63:1 – 65:4) This scene erupts in a cacophonous montage of violence, much of its action happening simultaneously. Events overlap and interpenetrate; there are flashbacks to previous chapters; apparently disjointed images tumble over each other. For instance: the lust of the ‘Divisions of Reuben terrorizes the nations; Zoas rage at their cosmic plow; Norse gods delight in sacrifice; Jehovah incarnates; the daughters weave webs of war and pestilence; Los is deluded by ‘the Looking Glass of Enitharmon’. Unsurprisingly, Los does not know if he is awake or dreaming. This is the sort of scene that makes critics like Southey call Jerusalem a ‘perfectly mad poem’. There are four important characters in this episode: Luvah, the Spectre, Los, and (above all) Vala, who ends up dominating humanity. Although it is problematic to call characters in Blake symbols for social or cultural phenomena, by separating out events in a quasi-allegorical way we may more easily understand the action here. Let us look at three of the important vignettes. Remember: some of these things are happening simultaneously. In Plate 63 Luvah (France) is brought to trial by Albion (England) ‘in his own city of Paris’ for he has slain ‘Tharmas, the Angel of the Tongue’ (J63:5). This arraignment may allude to the British occupations of Paris in 1814 and 1815 (Erdman 1954: 466). Slaying ‘the Angel of the Tongue’ is perhaps a reference to Pitt’s ‘gagging acts’ (Erdman 1954: 302–5); a censorship which may have inspired Blake to become increasingly cryptic in his prophetic writings. While this is happening, the ‘Giants & Witches & the Ghosts of Albion’ dance in orgiastic triumph (J63:9–10); their sexual energy is war energy. We know Blake disapproves of sexual repression; enforced chastity fosters aggression. In the next vignette Los (often identified with the poet) complains that ‘the Druids demanded Chastity from Woman & all was lost’ (J63:25). But he cannot believe that the terrible violence stemming from such repression is real: though he hears Gwendolen (one of Vala’s chaste minions) laughing at the carnage permeating Europe (and world history) and sees Vala with her ‘Druid Knife of Revenge’, he thinks this is all ‘in Vision . . . in the LookingGlass of Enitharmon . . . a Poetic Vision of the Atmospheres’ (J63:30–40). But Blake indicates that this vision is, in fact, socio-political reality. In the third vignette we see Vala, rising in power with all her daughters to conjoin with the empirical Spectre as a ‘dark Hermaphrodite’ (J64:1–31). Vala (with the Spectre) is now both male and female; she has obliterated male selfrespect. Untouchable and completely self-enclosed, she weaves a web of death, feeding on ‘accusation of Sin & Judgment’ (J64:22). Engineering a matriarchy as aggressive as any patriarchy, Vala/Spectre treats men as men have long

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treated women, crying that the male is but ‘a breeder of Seed, a Son & a Husband’. Hermaphrodite Vala is more deadly than the kings she directs.30 She manipulates Arthur (the Druid warrior king); her delusive beauty fills Albion (Britain) as well as Canaan with misery and violence. This virgin warwhore overshadows the peace of Jerusalem. Chaos and violence escalate—as we shall see.

SCENE FIVE: NAKED DAUGHTERS, W A R , D I S E A S E ( 6 5 : 5– 6 9 : 5) Cruelties, arising from Selfhood and sexual repression, dominate this complex scene which is enacted (like much of Jerusalem) ‘in the depths of Albion’s bosom’ (J65:5). Vala, winged in white and wearing sapphire shoes, presides over workers and warriors made wretched by her tyrannical regime. Her Druid daughters cast lots to ‘vote the death of Luvah’.31 Like Roman soldiers tormenting Christ, these naked daughters ‘bind [Luvah’s] forehead with thorns of iron [and] put into his hand a reed’, but they mock Luvah, not as the King of the Jews, but as ‘the King of Canaan’ (J65:5–7; 66:20–5). Blake’s Jesus is not only the King of the Jews; he is connected to all people, including the ‘enemy’ who are represented here as the Canaanites. This undermines the theology of chosenness dear to Albion’s Druid sons. Seduced by Vala (their chaste Deist goddess), Urizen and his quasi-Masonic sons are sucked into the general chaos; they abandon their ‘rule & compasses’, converting peaceful arts and manufacture into a military-industrial complex. Blake prefigures Marx as he describes how alienated workers suffer, compelled ‘to grind / And polish brass & iron hour after hour . . . / Kept ignorant of its use . . . to obtain a scanty pittance of bread’ (J65:23–7) (Doskow 1982: 129–30). Like Roman soldiers in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, oppressed conscripts here fear their officers ‘more than the enemy’ (P237; J65:36)32 but they adore Vala, delighting her with ‘hearts laid open to the light by the broad grizly sword’ (J65:29–57). They butcher their opponents with relish. In Plate 66 we see a naked warrior crouching with his head between the thighs of a naked daughter who brandishes her Druid knife. Erotic energy is perverted in the cause of destruction. It no longer leads into the Divine Body; it destroys it. Albion’s spectrous sons and Druid daughters do not emanate, they offer nothing to each other or to others. Instead, they absorb one another and destroy 30

She is like the hermaphrodite Friga overcoming the Saxon Mars in legend, and in poetry popularized by William King (1736: lxiv–lixvi, 166–69). 31 Gwendolen and Ragan are among those who cast lots. 32 This could also apply to those serving under the Duke of Richmond.

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the world around them. Because they do not ‘comingle in Love’, they are ‘adjoin’d by Hate’ (J66:56). When the spectrous son deceives ‘A Victim . . . he becomes her Priest & she his Tabernacle’, creating a co-dependent (hermaphroditic) sexual system enmeshed within the deadly veil only Jesus can rend (J65:59–61). As in Plate 47, the torturers torment themselves, for Vala ‘the Emanation of their murder’d Enemy’ is their own ‘beloved Mother’. The spectrous tormentors suffer with their victim, ‘their muscular fibres . . . cramp’d & smitten’, for they and Luvah are part of the same body (J65:67–8). Like the nations terrorized by Reuben in Chapter Two ‘they become like what they behold!’ (J65:79). Like Reuben, their senses contract, altering Divine Vision (J66:35–40). Divine vision changes from a ‘burning flame’ (perhaps Moses’ burning bush or the Pentecostal fire), a guardian ‘column of fire’ (guiding the Israelites in Exodus), a ‘fiery wheel surrounding earth and heaven’ (as in Boehme’s vision) —until it dwindles into an atomistic ‘globe of blood wandering distant in an unknown night’ (J66:40–4). This shrunken vision shrivels the human form and ravages cities, the environment, and the cosmos. This is the ideology against which Erin strove in Plate 49, a world in which all are enemies. As the Divine Vision dwindles, Albion’s war-weaving daughters continue the disemboweling (first seen in Plate 25), reweaving the nervous and reproductive systems into constricted knots (a polypus, or tumor, of death); simultaneously nature also shrivels, isolated from humanity and from the divine (J66:48–52). Blake now thrusts us into an eschatological centrifuge in which imagery from Noah’s flood, the Book of Revelation, and Psalm 107 collide. Albion’s polypus of hatred and fear destroys families and nations: rivers run with blood (Rev.16.4) and, like the storm-tossed sailors in Psalm 107.27, cathedral cities ‘reel & stagger’ while the sun forgets his course ‘like a drunken man’ (J66:66, 66:74). But there is no safe land in this tempest; ‘they send the Dove & Raven in Vain’ (Gen.9; J66:70). As in the Apocalypse (Rev.6), the sun and moon are smitten and ‘the mountains and hills shrink up’, withering like the gourd Jonah curses when Nineveh is not destroyed (J66:81–4). Human senses shrivel beneath the Druid knife as Albion’s daughters celebrate a perverted Eucharist for ‘those who drink their blood & the blood of their Covenant’ (J67:1).33 In offering this Eucharist the daughters are ‘united in Rahab and Tirzah’, as they were united in Vala the hermaphrodite in the previous scene, creating a vegetative (wholly material) world (J67:1–6). With the ‘Iron Wheels of War’ which Jerusalem feared in Chapter One (J22:34), they spin a material world devoid of divine love, a world consisting only of the ‘opake hardness’ of ‘Atomic Origins of Existence’.34 Only the strong survive. Only warriors are 33 34

389).

This parodies Matt.26.28; Mark 14.24; Heb.13.20. Inspired by Democritus, John Dalton formulated his atomic theory in 1804 (Durant 1967a:

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adored, raging beneath ‘the iron whips of their Captains & consecrated banners’, like the battle standards raised by Constantine to conquer in Christ’s name. The Deist polypus35 spreads its cancer from Francis Bacon’s ‘Druidic’ Verulam36 to Chichester, Exeter, Greece, Sodom and Gomorrha, Japan, and all the world (J67:24–40). Contained within this catalogue of mayhem there are references to Blake’s personal life. Skofield (who accused Blake of sedition) is represented as being fed with violence by Rahab/Tirzah, Vala’s compliant sidekicks. Blake expresses this in terms of biblical parallels; Scofield and Kotope (another fallen son) are nursed with the milk of Dan and Gad,37 who sought to kill their brother Joseph. Rahab/Tirzah dips Joseph’s coat in ‘the blood of battle’ (J67:23).38 Moreover, she herself contains a ruthless chorus of Hebrew daughters (Noah, Malah, Hoglah, Milcah) and they are all Emanations of Manasseh (a man, a land, and a child-sacrificing king).39 They are descended from the Joseph they slaughter in Jerusalem. Tirzah and her daughters enjoy torturing men; they love control. In a particularly gruesome passage, Tirzah says she loves the man she blinds ‘with a hot iron’ (J67:44–8). Sister Noah must ‘fetch a girdle of strong brass, heat it red-hot’, and ‘press it around the loins’ of the victim (J67:59–61).40 In Plate 67 we see the male victim on a Procrustean rack and in Plate 68 we hear how Malah and Hoglah circumscribe his tongue, as Milcah fastens his ear ‘with a screw of iron’ into the rock of Mount Ebal (J68:3–6) (where Levites curse law-breakers in Deuteronomy 27). Like Vala, Tirzah uses Moral Law to control her victims and declares that ‘Men [must be] bound upon the stems of vegetation’ (J68:9). Warriors sing in praise of their sacrificial priestesses. They know they are enslaved, and they love it. Vala’s worldwide web rains blood (J68:21), nourishing Molech, the Ammonite god to whom children are sacrificed in Hinnom’s Vale (2 Kings 23), an atrocity Blake twice painted when illustrating Milton’s ‘Nativity’ Ode (c538–5/ pl.664; c542–5/pl.670). The warriors know that if they dare rend Vala’s (hymeneal) veil with their (phallic) spear they could be healed of deadly desire, but they fear their ‘Virgin of terrible eyes’ as the Israelites feared the Ark of the 35

Connolly discusses how eighteenth-century medical notions about tumors might have influenced Blake (2002: 130–2). 36 Verulam was the third-largest city in Roman Britain. It is now called St Alban’s, after Britain’s first Christian martyr. Francis Bacon, made Baron Verulam in 1618, is a member of Blake’s Druidic Deist Trinity. 37 Samson was of the tribe of Dan; Gad was known for prowess in war (Gen.49.17–19). 38 Boehme conflates Joseph’s bloody coat with Christ’s mantle, a garment of wisdom which could eradicate hunger, pride, and anger (MM68.427–31). 39 See Numbers 36 (S779). Joseph’s firstborn, Manasseh (Gen.41.51), becomes a tribe and is a land of idolatrous groves in 2 Chronicles 31.1. King Manasseh offers his son to Molech in II Kings 21. 40 When condemning Christian warfare Henry More describes similar tortures (1708: 506–7).

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Covenant, which killed Uzzah (a warrior) when he dared to steady it (2 Sam.6) (J68:43–52). Terrible Vala/Rahab cuts and roasts the flesh of infants, letting ‘the Spies depart’ back ‘to Meribah Kadesh’, the Israelite encampment in Numbers 13.26.41 (Those Israelites utterly destroyed Rahab’s city and other Canaanite towns.) To make matters worse, Vala/Rahab’s conscripts can remember a time of ‘intellectual pleasures & Energies’, but they feel compelled to ‘rush again to War’, for they are ‘drunk with unsatiated love’. Erotic repression feeds ‘the ravening eating Cancer . . . devouring Jerusalem’ (J68:11–69:5). Fury, desire, and fear are overwhelming.

SCENE SIX: BEULAH-ULRO/HEAVENLY CANAAN (69:6 – 7 1: 5 5 ) Now Blake gives us some relief from the orgiastic warfare perpetuated by Vala and her daughters; we move from a macro-political world to a more psychological one. As Albion briefly retreated from political, social, and ecological breakdown to Beulah in Chapter One (J19), so here we are moved from a montage of cacophonous geopolitical violence to the internal world of Beulah—and its problems. As in Chapter One (J20–2), Beulah is here tainted by the depredations of Vala, the Deist goddess. Moral Law, jealousy, and fury are made even more malevolent when enshrined as ideology. But as we have seen throughout the poem, Beulah need not lead into Ulro; Eden/Eternity (like ‘the time of love’ in Chapter One) is always present, always possible. When the scene begins, Los tries to drive ‘the enormous Form’ of the deadly Deist polypus away ‘from Albion’s cliffy shore’ but the hermaphrodite monster continues to infect Jerusalem’s daughters with the disease of jealousy and Moral Law. He likens this situation to the story of Rachel and Leah who, Blake believes, are filled with ‘Contention and Jealousy’ refusing ‘liberty to the Male’ (i.e. they do not give their maidens to their husband) (J69:9–15). But Blake has misread the biblical story. In Genesis 30 Leah and Rachel do offer their maidenhoods and indeed their serving girls (Bilhah and Zilpah) to Jacob; the maidens and their offspring belong to them, and whoever has the most sons has the highest status. The biblical women do compete for sexual status but not in terms of Vala’s cold manipulations. This misreading should not detract from Blake’s warning, however. The erotic world, the state of Beulah, can become self-enclosed, like the Vala/ Spectre hermaphrodite, relating to nothing beyond itself. When Beulah does not open into Eden, love can be infected with Selfhood; it becomes ‘secret 41

Blake conflates two reconnaissance stories.

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amorous theft’, filled with guilt and jealousy, leading to punishment and crime. Self-enclosed love (‘that seeketh only Self to please’42) can turn into ‘Mutual Hate . . . & mutual Deceit & mutual Fear’ (J69:26–38). When Jesus rends Vala’s ‘Infernal Veil’, he opens the way into the centre of ‘the Inner Sanctuary’, where the human meets the divine, erotically and spiritually (J69:29–40). The erotic and the sacred coinhere. The ‘Inner Sanctuary’ is contained within each member of ‘the Camp’ (J69:41)—an allusion to the Israelites’ encampment around their untouchable ark in Numbers 1.50–3. Throughout the poem Blake has likened the ark and tabernacle to female genitalia (J7:65– 70, 30:34, 56:40, 68:15). His Jesus shatters the taboo against touching that holy place.43 From ‘the Sanctuary of Eden’, the locus of erotic and spiritual bliss, human beings can emanate outward and reach the circumference of the Divine Body, which includes all living things. The Divine Body is infinite; there is no limit to its expansion in love. Love is not restricted to a race or a tribe or a system of belief; it is ubiquitous and it is sensual. The human becomes divine in ‘Embraces’ that are ‘Cominglings from the Head even to the Feet’ (J69:43).44 Human–divine embrace can both include and go beyond mundane orgasm. But Los’s opponent, ‘hermaphroditic’ Hand (enmeshed in Vala/Spectre), would rather be ‘a pompous High Priest entering by a Secret Place’ (J69:44), repressing sexual joy and divine communion through elaborate taboos. He is a self-enclosed materialist, separating the human from the divine. Like Albion, hermaphroditic Hand is rocky and opaque. Coinherent with the Deist Trinity, ‘Bacon & Newton & Locke’, his verbal description matches the visual depiction of the triple-headed king in Plate 50, its ‘Three brains in contradictory council brooding incessantly’ (J70:5). Albion’s twelve giant sons rip out from ‘the hideous orifice’ of Hand’s bosom where Rahab hides, ‘his Feminine Power unreveal’d’. This ‘Feminine Power’ (or Emanation) is repressed by an addiction to a science of ideas, an addiction now called ideology. The concept of ‘ideology’, a term coined by the French philosopher de Tracy to eclipse theology, is first found in England in 1796.45 Like Albion, devotees of ideology have no use for imaginative fibres of love or Saviours singing of forgiveness; such things are ‘unscientific’. Ideological Rahab believes ‘All wisdom / To consist in the agreements & disagreements of Ideas’ (J70:6–7), a notion repeatedly expressed in Book IV of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human See Blake’s ‘The Clod & the Pebble’ (K211). Throughout this passage Blake relies on the theology of Hebrews, particularly Chapter 9. 44 Bloom (1963: 457) likens such comminglings to Raphael’s description of angelic erotics in Paradise Lost: ‘Easier than air with air, if Spirits embrace / Total they mix, union of pure with pure / Desiring . . . ’ (VIII.626–8). 45 See Oxford English Dictionary. Wokler (2005) recounts the history of the idea and its dissemination. 42 43

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Understanding (1770: especially 149–54). Rahab’s seductive abstractions destroy ‘Imagination, the Divine Humanity’. Like Albion in Chapter One, Vala/ Rahab’s ‘Brain enlabyrinths the whole heaven of her bosom & loins’ to feed her imperious desires. A Druid cromlech dominates the plate as this beautiful Deist goddess, ‘Inorb’d and bonified’, receives kisses ‘from Gods or men’, consuming them in her embrace (J70:21–31). In that embrace, there is no emanating outward. The ‘Starry Heavens’ are completely disconnected from ‘the mighty limbs of Albion’ (J70:32). This, quintessentially, is the world of Ulro. Yet Eden/Eternity always hovers; we can always go there (J71:1–13). As in Hebrews 8.5 the mundane land with its Mosaic limitations is but ‘a shadow of heavenly things’. Like the tabernacle in Hebrews set up by the Lord (Heb.8.2), Blake’s Jerusalem dwells beyond ordinary space and time ‘in heavenly Canaan’ (J71:1), a place of infinite translucence. There ‘the Circumference’ of the Divine Body is the centre of your being, forever expanding ‘to Eternity’. ‘In your own Bosom you bear your Heaven and Earth’ (J71:17–18)46 and your worlds interact with others. Cities, rivers, mountains, and stars are also human ‘& when you enter into their Bosoms you walk / In Heavens & Earths’ (J71:15–17). Interior and exterior, the micro- and macrocosmic, interrelate. ‘Heaven, earth, & Hell’ can ‘live in harmony’ (J3). In Eden/Eternity even terrible Hand can happily commingle, joining in love with Emanations and other Sons of Albion. Blake may be redeeming his stern judge; Hand (endowed with the Duke of Richmond’s territories in Selsey, Sussex, and Middlesex)47 is no longer ferocious; he is friends with cities, rivers, villages, and all creatures (J71:10–15). In Eternity, Hand and Hyle commingle with Gwendolen and Cambel, delighting ‘the Inhabitants of the whole Earth’ with ‘their beautiful light’. All the sons and daughters fill Britain with music and heavenly light, often emanating in triune relationships (J71:20–49). Kox and Estrild join with Cordella to shine ‘southward over the Atlantic’; Kotope’s Sabrina joins with Mehetabel to shine ‘west over America’. Los’s ‘ungenerated’48 sons (Rintrah, Palamabron, Bromion, Theotormon) fill British universities and ‘the Four Provinces of Ireland’ with imaginative light (J71:50–4): the rational principles embodied in Bacon, Newton, and Locke need no longer enshroud the life of the mind. In Eden/Eternity it is ‘the mingled affections of the Brothers’ which enlighten the whole earth. But in Ulro ‘Albion is darkened & Jerusalem lies in ruins . . . ’ (J71:54–5) as she is in the poem’s opening scene (J5:48–50). In Ulro heaven and earth seem separate. In Plate 71’s design a red swan nuzzles the toe of a naked Emanation,

46 Paracelsus wrote about how most men do not know that they carry the stars within themselves (1894/1951: 228). Also see Paley (1970: 55–6). 47 As mentioned in Part I, Chapter 2, ‘Sons and Daughters’, Richmond presided at Chichester (formerly Selsey), and had properties in Sussex and Middlesex. 48 The ‘ungenerated’ are more angelic than material; they are not in the state of Generation.

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perhaps an allusion to the ruin engendered by Zeus’ vegetative commingling with Leda, as Erdman (1974: 350) and Witke (1986: 167) suggest.49 When Beulah does not open into Eden, sexual adventures can launch the deadly ships of war. Love can be corrupted, and this corrupts imaginative vision.

SCENE SEVEN: FALLIBLY BUILDING (71:56 – 7 5: 2 7 ) In this complex scene Los is trying to build Golgonooza, but there are intractable difficulties. The action flashes back, with disjointed variations, to previous building projects and problems. When the scene begins Los fears (as he did in Chapter Two) ‘lest Albion should turn his Back / Against the Divine Vision’ (J71:59 and 31:2) and ‘fall over the Precipice of Eternal Death’ (J71:59 and 40:31–5). We readers know that Albion’s fall has already taken place, that in this chapter’s first scene ‘Albion fell down, a Rocky fragment from Eternity hurl’d / By his own Spectre’ (J54:6–7). Is Los unaware of this? Throughout this long scene Los and his ungenerated sons build as if this had not happened, as if Albion’s poisonous Tree had not infected their work. Los continues to build Golgonooza, but as we saw in Plate 58, he has been working under the direction of Urizen, the rational Zoa who reduces the everexpanding Divine Body to a measurable ‘world of shapes’ (J54:24). In Plate 72, Los turns twelve of Golgonooza’s sixteen gates ‘Four Square’; this means the infinite body becomes a three-dimensional cube. Jerusalem’s twelve sons (Hand, Hyle, Reuben, Simeon, etc.) flee through the four-square gates, separating themselves from their temple-city (their spiritual and social context). The sons of Los (unconfined by mundane space-time) remain to guard Golgonooza’s western wall, which may refer to the surviving western wall of the Temple in Jerusalem. (As we have seen, the west is the place of the circumference and the tongue (J12:55, 12:60, 14:30.) Albion (who is humanity) cannot express himself and will not expand beyond himself. From his first appearance in the poem, he has been gripped by jealousy and fear, erotic problems which have social and political consequences, blighting Golgonooza and impeding Los. In Plate 72’s design, pale cherubim hover above a translucent aurora of fire, weeping beside the vegetable globe emblazoned with the motto: Continually Building, Continually Decaying Because of Love & Jealousy. Jealousy blights love in Ulro, and this undermines creativity as well as human relations. Los cannot build Golgonooza as a truly redemptive space while he is erotically tormented. The motto at the bottom of the page (written in reverse as if it

49

Engendering Helen, whose beauty triggered the Trojan War.

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comes from Enithatmon’s looking glass) is indicative of such erotic torment: Woman the comforter of Man becomes the Tormenter & Punisher.50 Yet Jerusalem’s eternal foundations (the source of liberty and love) remain; they wait like bulbs to sprout when winter is past (J72:13–28). Jerusalem can animate human consciousness and the political landscape, though both seem frozen in a sleep of death. The sleep of death and the great awakening are part of one whole. Los and/or Blake call all nations to ‘Come up to Jerusalem!’ (J72:33), as Isaiah (2.2) and Micah (4.1–2) call all nations ‘in the last days’. In Blake, the nations respond, waiting for Jerusalem; ‘they look up for the Bride’ (J72:37). But Golgonooza’s gates do not yet open into each other, as they do when Jerusalem returns; Beulah has not yet opened into Eden. Blake casts enthusiasts and mystics, both Catholic51 and Protestant, as the Sons and Daughters guarding the fourfold Beulah gate in Albion. ‘Fenelon, Guion, Teresa, Whitefield, & Hervey’ will guide ‘the great Wine-press of Love’, where human grapes can be pressed into the ‘wine of life’ (J72:45–52).52 With the help of these guardians Albion’s tomb can be a place of resurrection. Let us now consider the importance of these guardian guides.

Excursus These guardians have very different theological stances. They come from different nations and traditions; they have different ideas about salvation and prayer. But each has a personal relationship, even an imaginative one, with God. We can learn from each one even if we disagree with them (as Blake does with Hervey). By casting diverse Christians as Beulah’s guardians, Blake is setting the stage for theologically differentiated unity. ‘Teresa’ is Teresa of Avila. Blake would have seen drawings or engravings of Bernini’s sculpture of the Spanish saint, where she swoons in spiritually erotic ecstasy before an angel.53 Samuel Palmer claimed that Blake ‘often quoted’ the words of St Teresa (BR57), which were translated in 1790 by John Milner, a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. His edition of Teresa’s Exclamations of the

50 Paley notes that the serpent resembles the one in the Society for Constitutional Information’s ‘Declaration of Rights’, engraved by William Sharp after Thomas Stothard (P250). 51 Steve Clark (2006) strangely misreads Jerusalem as a ‘high cultural version’ of anti-Catholic mass petitionings conducted throughout the 1820s—ignoring Blake’s condemnation of all (including Deists, Lutherans, and St Paul) who have contributed to ‘Religion Hid in War’ (J75). Andrew Lincoln (2006: 156–9), however, affirms Blake’s theological diversity as he tries to make ‘Blake’s prophetic mission’ conform to that of ‘the more orthodox British Christians in this period’, but he disregards Jerusalem’s unorthodox antinomianism and erotic spirituality. 52 As in Blake’s Four Zoas 9: 692–800 (K375–8). 53 His best friend, John Flaxman, spent seven years studying in Rome (Bentley 2001: 77).

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Soul to God, a series of meditations in which sin is not a moral category but a state of separation from God, features a lament for those (like Albion) who are ‘so desperately miserable’ that ‘they do not desire God’. Teresa prays that God will go in search of them (1790: 35). She also prays for those who labor in frenzy (like Los), creating destruction when they seek to do good (1790: 48). Teresa’s emphasis upon the interior spiritual world and contemplative prayer (though she was also indefatigably active) inspired Catholic Quietists like Jeanne-Marie Guion (1648–1717). Her autobiography describes how she endured an unhappy marriage, a difficult mother-in-law, and the death of beloved children, finding strength in prayer which led to mystical experiences. Because of these writings she was sent to Bastille for five years; her work implies that the soul does not need the mediation of a church. Guion writes about ‘self-annihilation’ and Blake may have gleaned that term from her treatise A Short and Easy Method of Prayer (translated 1775). In Guion’s ‘self-annihilation’ the soul melts like that of the bride in the Song of Solomon. When we die to ourselves we live in God (Guion 1775: 488–90). Though Bishop Fénélon (1651–1715) was Mme Guion’s spiritual defender, he eventually condemned such Quietist passivity. Fénélon was criticized for his teachings against war, nationalism, and divine-right monarchy (Cross and Livingstone 1997: 605). Paley (P251) and Stevenson (S829) both comment on William Godwin’s praise of Fénélon. (Like Tom Paine and Joseph Priestly, Godwin was one of the authors of Joseph Johnson, the radical bookseller, and a guest at his weekly dinner parties.)54 Fénélon’s interests were political as well as spiritual. George Whitefield (1714–1770) was a Calvinist Methodist. His ‘Enthusiasm’ differs greatly from Catholic Quietism, yet like Teresa and Guion he emphasizes a believer’s personal relationship with God. Whitefield’s theatrical preaching during ‘The Great Awakening’ converted thousands in Britain and in America. James Hervey (1714–1758) was another Calvinist Methodist, famous for his Meditations Among the Tombs (1746). Blake, in an 1820 watercolor, reinterprets Hervey’s grim Meditations as a transfiguration (c770/pl.967).55 Hervey’s God is a jealous God, wielding ‘the Sword of Infinite Indignation’ (1797: 82–3), but Blake’s painting is about divine mercy. It sets its viewers (with black-clad Hervey, clearly labeled) facing the Christ of the Transfiguration above the bread and wine on an altar where there is no cross. Clearly, Blake’s theology differs greatly from Hervey’s. God may sit in wrath at the top of Blake’s painting, but scenes of mercy (Noah’s rainbow, the forgiven Prodigal) emanate down through the spiraling composition framing luminous Jesus. Resurrecting lovers embrace among ministering angels. Judgment is love. 54 55

It is not known whether Blake attended many or any of these parties (Bentley 2001: 108–11). Discussed Part I, pp. 117–18.

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Blake has chosen as Beulah’s guardians a group of historical figures who do not agree on many theological points. They are an ecumenical salad but they occupy the same bowl, for they all have an intense personal relationship with God. ‘Opposition is True Friendship’ in Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell (pl.20; K157) and in Jerusalem (J97–8). Diversity animates the Divine Body. The harlot-dragon of war, by contrast, tolerates neither opposition nor true friendship, and ‘the innumerable multitudes of Golgonooza’ continue to serve that beast in Plate 73, laboring ‘round the Anvils of Death’, creating war machines (‘swords, arrows, cannons, mortars’) as well as apocalyptic harvesting equipment ‘to winnow kingdoms’ (J73:9–14). They work under the influence of ‘the starry characters of Og & Anak’ (J73:16– 20), Canaanite giants (Num.13.33; Deut.3.11–13) who might be descended from the violent giants engendered by lustful angels and the fair daughters of men (Gen.6.1–5, 1 Enoch). Like Beulah’s daughters in Plate 59, these frenzied workers also ‘Create the wooly lamb & downy fowl’ (J73:18). They may not know that the incongruous images of Christ (the Lamb) and the Spirit (the ‘downy fowl’) can eventually obliterate the war machine they manufacture. Ironically, their work could transform the war-dragon and turn the arts of death back into arts of life. What looks like destructive work may be creative; what looks creative may be destructive. Building Golgonooza is both positive and negative: as he builds, Los is said to be ‘of the Elohim’ (J73:24), an ambiguous reference to the plural God. Elohim can be destructive; Elohim can be redemptive.56 In building Golgonooza Los wants to be redemptive, but he is not successful. He wants to stem the destructive tide which Vala/Rahab has unleashed upon the world. He tries to open the self-enclosed Emanation, ‘to open the Furnaces of Affliction’ within her so that she may be capable of feeling; but opening those furnaces merely exacerbates her opacity (or defense mechanisms). Emanations (like ordinary mortals) tend to contract (not expand) in response to torment. Los cannot see this because he is furious. Infuriated by dehumanizing ideology (exemplified by Voltaire in this passage), Los becomes as combative as the Deists with whom he contends (J73:29–34). Rahab/Tirzah create warriors and kings (including the state called Satan); Los responds by furiously forging a panoply of equally violent Hebrew heroes (J73:34–43)—in an attempt to protect humanity from the depredations of princedom and war. Like Jesus (J35:12–16) Los is seeking to deliver Albion from ‘the terrible Family feuds’ (J73:45–6) first mentioned in Chapter One (J18:16–21). By 56 ‘Elohim’ was seen both positively and negatively by imaginative theologians in eighteenthcentury London. On the one hand, Sarah Flaxmer, infused with the spirit of the Woman Clothed with the Sun in the 1790s, indicates that Christ the Mediator is of the Elohim. Through Elohim righteousness, mercy, and peace as well as wrath comes to humanity (n.d.: xv; 14–17). On the other hand, a Moravian discourse discusses how ‘the rebellious Elohim with their Leader became Devils’ (Twenty-One Discourses 1753: 205–7).

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creating his characters as ‘States’ through which life’s pilgrims can pass (J73:43–5), he seeks to deliver humanity from domestic and political violence. But he is infected by the rage he wants to assuage. The feuds continue. We see ‘the Reasoning Power’ (embodied in Urizen) destroying ‘Imagination, the Divine Body, by Martyrdoms & Wars’ (J74:13). The daughters and sons, driven by Los’s hammer, become Asian war gods, destroying divine vision (J74:20–2). Horrified, Blake speaks in the first person, praying to the Holy Spirit to be taught ‘the testimony of Jesus’ (J74:14–15) which is ‘the spirit of prophecy’ in Revelation 19.10. Like the penitent King David in Psalm 51.15–18, Blake wants the gates of his lips to be opened that he may speak words eradicating sacrifice and inspiring inward transformation (J74:40–1). He recoils from unmelodic music and abstractions in art as he watches the daughters tearing apart Albion’s Israelite sons, infecting the world with bellicose lust (J74:40–50). ‘In South Molton Street’ (where he is etching Jerusalem) Blake sees the agonies of Dinah whose brothers slaughtered her fiancé and all his people in Shechem because he dared embrace their sister without their prior consent (Gen.34). Dinah is ‘the youthful form of Erin’ (J74:54), the tragic figure who vegetates in Blake’s design. As she struggles ‘to take a form of beauty’ (J74:53), she may be ‘a promise of resurrection’, an antidote to Rahab’s ‘Religion hid in War’ (Fuller 1988: 210). Rahab reigns in Plate 75. Bath, who can be both a peace-loving ‘physician’ and a Druid ‘poisoner’ in Plate 41 (discussed in Part II, Chapter 2, ‘Scene Four: Los and The Eternals’), is now entirely Druidic. He stands with Merlin, Bladud, and Arthur, proffering the poison cup of Rahab/Babylon (like the harlot’s cup in Revelation 17.4). Los, infected by ‘Reasoning Power’ (J74:7), both creates and reveals the apocalyptic harlot-beast as he builds ‘the twentyseven heavens and their churches’, an ecclesiastical history in which the serpentine harlot of ‘Religion hid in War’ reigns in three eras (J75:10–20).57 The first, spanning Adam to Lamech (Gen.5), features hermaphrodite giants like the warring brutes engendered by the lustful Watchers in the Abyssinian Book of Enoch. The 1801 excerpts from that book include vignettes from the slaying of Abel to the Flood and describe how angelic mutants learned ‘to make swords and knives and shields’ filling the earth with wickedness and war (‘Concerning the Writings and Readings of Jude’, p. 21). Blake’s second era, the history of Noah to Terah, is filled with ‘Female Males . . . A Male within a Female hid’ (J75:14–15), possibly alluding to the worship of battle goddesses like Ishtar/Astarte in Mesopotamia or Andraste in Druid Britain.58 The churches of the third era, from Abram to Luther, generate ‘patriarchal pomp This may allude to Joachim of Fiore’s three ‘statuses’—but it is not known whether Blake knew anything about Joachim. 58 Whittaker (1999: 135) discusses Andraste’s depiction in Inigo Jones’ Stonehenge Restored to the Romans (1655). 57

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and cruel pride’, devouring Jerusalem.59 Jesus, descending to the infernal regions after his crucifixion, breaks through ‘the Central Zones of death’, and harrows the hell these churches create, bringing Albion as well as raging Luvah ‘into light eternal’ (J75:25–6). Resurrection shatters internal and external cycles of violence. Yet Albion snoozes on, oblivious to the love of Christ; again ‘the Starry Heavens’ flee from his body. When separated from God, humanity is severed from nature and from the cosmos. In Plate 75 we see the beast Albion worships: Rahab/Babylon, ‘the Abomination of Desolation’60 . . . ‘Religion hid in War, a Dragon Red & hidden Harlot’ (J75:19–20). This dragon-harlot interfuses Revelation’s seven-headed reptile (Rev.12.3) with a double female; the image alludes to Babylon (Rev.17–18) and to the leviathan called Rahab, overcome in primeval sea battle by the Lord (Isa.51.9; Ps.89.9–10; Job 26.12) (Rosso 2002). Here she spirals, green-scaled and golden, deceptively lovely.61 Like Vala’s gleaming veil, the dragon-harlot of war is overspreading the earth.

INTERVAL (76) We have just gone through a disorienting apocalypse, coping with disjointed allusive language, abrupt scene changes, and strange shifts in perspective. These are in keeping with the violence and fragmentation assailing both individuals and societies, internally and externally. It is hard now to trust even those characters who seemed reliable: Los has fallen into Error; Jerusalem has nearly lost her mind; what look like the words of Jesus have been sung by slaves repressed by Albion’s Deist God. Luvah’s libidinous energy has become irrational and destructive, as it is during most revolutions. Los (co-opted by Urizen) is building ‘Religion Hid in War’ when he thinks he is creating a redemptive structure. Everything is breaking down. Jesus offers hope but both Los and Jerualem are disconnected from the Saviour’s Kingdom by Luvah’s fury, Vala’s manipulations, and Albion’s Selfhood. Humanity seems separate from nature, from God. Divine love can heal those fractures, revealing the human divinity in all living things. This human divinity is made manifest in the life of Jesus, the work of Los, the forgiveness of Jerusalem. In the next chapter, we can participate in that work and forgiveness by engaging with characters who take the sins of others upon themselves, who 59 Blake’s three eras are very different from Joachim of Fiore’s, whose eras begin with Mosaic Law and culminate in a liberating age of Spirit. Blake’s liberating era would be the fourth, in keeping with fourfold vision. Paley mentions their similarities (1983: 123). 60 See Dan.11–12; Mark 13.14; Matt. 24.15. 61 This malevolent image resembles the benign design of lovely sea deities engraved by Blake for Flaxman’s Hesiod between 1815 and 1817 (pl.28–29).

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pass through the death of Selfhood to life in the Divine Body. In the space between Jerusalem’s Chapters Three and Four, we are presented with the transfiguring power of Christ’s crucifixion.

Plate 76—Transfiguring Crucifixion When I first saw this crucifixion (in a Trianon facsimile of Copy E) I thought it was Los standing with outstretched arms before Christ on the oak. I was surprised to see that Blake labels him ‘Albion’ in Copies A and C, faintly etching the name ‘Jesus’ beside his right foot. In Chapter Four Albion sees that Los is Jesus and Jesus is Los, before he himself enters into fourfold vision. Jerusalem ends with the coinherence of Albion, Los, Jesus, and every living thing in the Song of Jerusalem. This crucifixion prepares the ground for that vision. As was discussed in Part I, Chapter 4, ‘Visualizing Jesus: Young’s Night Thoughts’, the passion of Plate 76 can be seen in many ways, containing intimations of transfiguration and resurrection. Blake turns sacrificial atonement into transformational at-one-ment.62 We give ourselves and we rise. In Plate 76 Albion is no longer storm-torn and lying upon a rock. Here he is upright; he can put on both Los and Christ. He can walk in new life. Throughout Jerusalem communities and individuals become what they behold (J34, 36, 44, 65), engendering a cycle of violence. Here Albion beholds Christ breaking that cycle. Albion beholds a vision of transformational self-annihilation and rises. What he beholds changes his body. ‘We shall be changed’ (1 Cor.15.52).

This reminds me of Fiddes’ interpretation (1991/ 1999: 51) of Romans 5 (in which ‘we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ by whom we have now received the atonement’) in terms of ‘participation . . . a characteristic of imagination’. We are buried with Christ ‘by baptism’ so that we should be raised up with him in glory to ‘walk in newness of life’ (Rom.6.4). 62

4 ‘To the Christians’—The Great Awakening THE PREFACE (77) A translucent white figure holds a string which leads us to the words God addressed to a misguided Pharisee en route to Damascus: ‘Saul, Saul, Why Persecutest thou me?’ (Acts 9.4). Is it the Lord or Blake, who like Ariadne, gives you the end of a golden string leading through the labyrinth of the poem? Going through Jerusalem’s gate might mean meeting a beast as Theseus did. You may be toppled by divine vision like St Paul. Plate 77’s call to the Christians is like a revivalist sermon, meant to be preached (as George Whitefield or Martin Luther King Jr. could preach) with the enthusiasm of ‘a true Orator’ (J3). In this sermon Blake infuses his text with scriptural allusions1 to undercut what has been called the Protestant work ethic2 and the hypocrisy ‘of sin, of sorrow, & of punishment’ (J77). For instance, the narrator/preacher sounds conventional when using Matthew’s parable (13.24) about the wheat and the tares to warn Christians against ‘every pleasure that intermingles with the duty of our station’. Yet, ironically, these pleasures sprout, not like weeds, but like wild flowers in Blake’s text. In another poem, ‘Auguries of Innocence’, ‘a wild flower’ is the locus of heaven (K431).3 The sermon in Plate 77 reconfigures biblical passages to encourage Christians to go beyond the limitations of the mortal body; but this does not negate the body. The sermon’s preacher says the Gospel gives ‘the liberty both of body & mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination’. ‘Is not the Body more than Raiment?’ he asks, assuming that we know Jesus answers that question by telling his listeners to ‘consider the lilies of the field’ (Matt.6.25–8; Luke 12.23–7) whose physical beauty is shaped by divine 1

Paley identifies Matthew 6.19, 13.24, 25.15 (P259). Of course Blake rejoices in creative work (and intellectual struggle) but he does not believe that working diligently is indicative of grace (as a good Calvinist might do). And he thinks notions of predestination are ‘abominable’ (in his ‘Annotations to Swedenborg’ (K131–3)). 3 ‘Auguries of Innocence’ begins: ‘To see a World in a Grain of Sand /And a Heaven in a Wild Flower’ (K431). 2

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love.4 Blake contrasts ‘the things relating to the Spirit’ with those ‘relating to the body which dies’ as Paul does in Romans 8. Prioritizing spiritual life raises up ‘your mortal bodies’ from death in the epistle (Rom.8.11). Blake affirms this; we are called to labor with spirit-filled bodies. As in Matthew’s Gospel talents are not to be hidden in the earth (Matt.25.14–20). Laying up treasures in heaven is about creating the beauties of art and science. Those ‘Mental Gifts and Performances’ (J77) can be laid up ‘where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through’ (Matt.6.20; Luke 12.33). As Jesus tells the Samaritan woman, the worship of God is ‘in Spirit & Truth’, not in liturgical regulations (John 4.20–4). Every ‘Mental Performance’, all you think and make, can manifest such worship. Every Christian has something to contribute to the building of Jerusalem. That building project is not about the Lockean ‘agreement and disagreement of ideas’ (J70:8), but about the joy of creation and discovery, of ‘Art & Science’. By Blakean standards mocking ‘a Mental Gift in another’ mocks Jesus, who gives those gifts. What looks like sin ‘in the sight of cruel man’ (such as the discoveries of Galileo or the naked beauties of Michelangelo or William Blake) is no sin ‘in the sight of our kind God’ (J77). The sermon segues into a poem in which judgment becomes apocatastasis. The first person prophet (as in Ezekiel 1) sees a ‘Wheel / Of fire surrounding all the heavens’ (J77:2–3) and this wheel devours all things, like Boehme’s wrathful wheel of fire. Like Swedenborg or John on Patmos, the speaker questions an angelic being, a ‘Watcher & a Holy-One’,5 and learns that the fiery ‘sword turning every way’ (which obstructs the Tree of Life in Genesis 3.24) is the religion ‘Of sin, of sorrow & of punishment’ against which Christ strove (J77:19). Jesus redeems nature and humanity ‘from this fiery law’ by his transfiguring forgiveness (J77:22–3) which melds wrath with love. The Watcher casts Blake as an apostle, exhorting him like Christ in the Gospels6 to heal the sick and cast out devils. But Blake’s ‘Holy One’ is unlike the biblical Christ who curses those who refuse to accept his emissaries (Matt.10.14–15).7 Now ‘no curse’ will blight anyone’s peace. No one need be trapped in hell; heaven is open to all. The preface ends with a wake-up call for England. Jerusalem will once more walk ‘in England’s green and pleasant bowers’. That means facing the dragon and annihilating Selfhood—as we shall see.

4 In Visions of the Daughters of Albion the imaginative virgin eyes of the heroine, Oothoon, rejoice ‘in happy copulation’ wherever beauty appears (6:23–7; K194). 5 Like the ‘Watchers’ in 1 Enoch 1–36 or Daniel 4. 6 For instance, see Matthew 10.7–15; Mark 6.7–12; Luke 9.1–6. 7 ‘And whosoever shall not receive you . . . it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city.’ See also Mark 6.11 and Luke 9.5.

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SCENE ONE: JERUSALEM BEFORE THE FURNACES (78:1– 80 : 3 6) In Plate 78’s design a bird-man perches on a rocky cliff as the sun hovers on the horizon of a dark sea. Paley outlines much of the debate concerning this figure’s identity, noting that Lesnick and Erdman see him as Hand, while Wicksteed, Witke, and Mitchell see him as Los (P261). In the original it is easier to see that the black shape gleaming stage left is a big Los hammer. Judith Ott (1976: 49–51), Stevenson (S841), and Mitchell (1978: 211–12) identify the bird as St John’s emblematic eagle, and Paley likens it to Blake’s depiction of that evangelical eagle in his watercolor, ‘Beatrice addressing Dante from the Car’ (c812.88). Erdman, Wicksteed, and Lesnick think the head is a rooster’s (P261). The rooster, or cock, is symbolically linked with Peter’s betrayal of Christ. I think Los is both as fallible as Peter and as visionary as John the Divine, as he perches on a rock at the sea’s edge, a place that can be both Dover and Patmos. He has good reason to be depressed, for his life’s work, the building of Golgonooza, has not restored Jerusalem; Golgonooza is a structure in which ‘Religion Hid in War’ is flourishing. Los broods pensive like the angel in Dürer’s Melancolia, The Mother of Invention (1514), a print Blake owned.8 This bird-headed seer may be mirroring (or, synchronically, regarding) the swan-headed woman in Plate 11 of Chapter One. You may remember that in Plates 11 and 12 we learned that Jerusalem’s sorrows empower Vala. Here, in Chapter Four, her attitude is changing. The sun is probably rising (we have just heard a wake-up song) as Jerusalem moves from despair to vigorous indignation in a marvellous monologue (J78–80).9 As the monologue begins, Jerusalem goes with Judea ‘into deepest hell’. Longing for Shiloh (like many Southcottians), she wanders like a lost sheep (Matt.15.24), mourning where Canaanites were slaughtered: at Bashan (Num.21.33–5), Heshbon (Num.21.25–30), and Goshen (Josh.10.41, 11.16). She laments in Gilead, the land where Jephthah’s warrior-vow ‘required’ him to sacrifice his daughter (Judges 11). She remembers the mutually beneficial ‘time of love’ when London’s children rejoiced at her breasts and at her knees (J79:16–33), coinhering with the children of Israel and Canaan as the Thames flows with the Jordan and the Medway with Canaanite Kishon (Judges 5). Jerusalem’s song is meant to animate both individuals and societies. She inspires the shepherd and plowman and emanates from within the minute particularity of each nation’s architecture, shipping, music, and/or furniture. From ‘Turkey & Grecia’ (in conflict when Blake wrote) Jerusalem’s music brings joy to the world (J79:36–52). Her music creates a culture of peace, a ‘time of love’.

8 9

Samuel Palmer informed Gilchrist that this print hung by Blake’s engraving table (BR752). I discuss this monologue at length in Part I, pp. 91–3.

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In this ‘time of love’ Jerusalem bathes in France and embraces Jesus on her golden couch in Spain (J79:39–42). This erotic image may have been inspired by the ‘Ecstasy’ sculpted by Bernini and described in the abridged Life of Teresa of Avila, a guardian of Beulah in the poem’s previous chapter (J72:50). In her memoir the Spanish saint describes an angel ‘with a long golden dart’, its flames of love piercing her heart and bowels with joy and woe commingled (1757: 101–2). Teresa’s ‘great raptures or extasies’ (1757: 102) may prefigure ‘the holy raptures of adoration’ Jerusalem’s children experience when Blake’s Bride embraces her Lamb (J79:42–4), an erotic vision that can have political consequences. Nations throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa can partake of Jerusalem’s liberating joy. But America shrinks from divine vision in Cabul, spreading pestilence and war ‘in patriarchal pomp’ with Albion and the children of Israel (J79:53–67). America is stricken with Britain’s and Israel’s deadly theology of chosenness and ‘Druidic’ chastity regulations—as Vala, the chaste Virgin Goddess, weaves webs of war with ‘the gore of the slain’ (J79:69). The Euphrates runs with blood as it does in Revelation 9.14–21. But Jerusalem is no longer passive in response to this violence. She is not gentle as she was in Chapter One when her sorrows animated Vala (J11–12); now she confronts her shadowy counterpart. She challenges Vala, demanding to know why she behaves as she does. Of course wily Vala takes no responsibility for the havoc she wreaks. As trumpets blare and captives howl she spins a deceitful tale, claiming that Luvah (whom she sealed in a furnace in Plate 5) commanded her ‘to murder Albion, the King of Men’ (J80:18). According to Vala, Albion captured her father and killed Luvah (they here cohere in one being). Vala says she revived the fallen (as warriors revive in Valhalla)—but father/Luvah forced her to kill Albion. She keeps Albion’s body unrevived, ‘embalm’d in moral law’, and tries to entice Jesus to dwell in Luvah’s tents (where she can control him), begging Christ ‘not to revive the Dead [Albion]!’ (J80:16–32). Like the dead Albion, Vala wants nothing to do with Jerusalem’s globalization, engendering worldwide musical beauty (harmony among nations) or with the celebration of erotic bliss—for such bliss undermines the institutionalized chastity by which Vala and her daughters enslave humanity. Jerusalem’s liberating love threatens their power.

SCENE TWO: WEAVING FALSE BODIES (80:37 –8 2 : 7 9) In this scene Vala and her daughters (her natural allies) want to maintain their power. To do so they think they must destroy Jerusalem and her children and control their male counterparts, particularly Hand and Hyle.

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First Vala uses her spindle, distaff, and looms to weave Jerusalem’s children into the deadly world view enshrouding humanity. She and her daughters seek to turn Jerusalem (a woman, a place of peace) into a repressive Druid war structure, spreading from Stonehenge (on ‘the wide Plain of Salisbury’ (J80:48)) throughout all the world. While this is happening, Vala’s daughters dance and sing with timbrels as they did in Chapter Three (J65–9), like the triumphant daughters of Israel in Exodus 15 or Psalm 68. (You may remember that Blake conflates Druids and Jews.) These chaste daughters cannot tolerate the free love Jerusalem offers. Cambel uses her warlike counterpart, Hand, to weave a world view in which the beauty of Jerusalem’s body is made ‘repugnant to the Lamb’ (J80:65), repressing human joy. Those who are repressed may break out in fury (as they do in Chapter Three), or they may be diminished and controlled by their fallen counterparts. In Chapter Two, Reuben’s cravings for inaccessible Tirzah led to the contraction of his senses (J34–6); here in Chapter Four we see how Hyle is disempowered by Gwendolen, his fallen Emanation. She does a very thorough job of contracting and controlling him. Gwendolen constricts his tongue, his kidneys, and his testicles, ‘giving him a form according to his Law’ (J80:69–75). ‘Hyle’ derives from the Greek word for ‘matter’, and Hyle’s law is material or ‘Natural Law’ (J80:57–85), a Law enmeshing humanity in death—as is indicated by the marginal design in which a man morphs from the long worm girding a naked emanation, a daughter of Albion. Throughout this scene Albion’s weaving daughters seek to control the warriors who whipped and oppressed them in Chapter One. Hovering over Oxford and Cambridge (cities shrouded by Bacon, Newton, and Locke in Plate 15), the daughters pause in ‘softest songs’ as they hearken to Gwendolen (J82:10–11). Gwendolen says she destroyed the warrior Reuben (akin to Hyle) because he sought to bind her (J81:10).10 Albion’s cruelty (and that of his sons) has understandably made Gwendolen, Cambel, and the other daughters fearful. That fear perverts the divine vision Los tries unsuccessfully to uphold. Paley notes that the words beneath the illustration of these women (J81: ‘Fear is the Parent of Earthly Love’) contravene 1 John 4.18: ‘There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear’ (P267).11 Gwendolen’s fear is animated by her world view, etched in mirror writing in the pillar of cloud that surrounds her in Plate 81’s design: In Heaven the only Art of Living Is Forgetting & Forgiving. But if you on Earth Forgive You shall not find where to live . . . (J81i). This has, indeed, been Jerusalem’s fate. She has nowhere to live; her love and forgiveness have left her homeless in Albion’s world. Gwendolen does not want to be homeless but her efforts at control 10

Gwendolen is another form of the Tirzah for whom Reuben longs (J34–6). Thanks to Barbara Newman for her insights about 1 John (personal email; November 2004). 11

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(born of fear) do not create security. She destroys her masculine counterpart and propagates falsehood. Her convoluted falsehood, enticing her sisters to adore Babylon, is called ‘prophetic’ (J82:20). Deceit can shape reality. Deceitful Gwendolen, as we have seen, is afraid. Her fear drives her to proclaim that the Daughters of Albion shall be divided and scattered, Albion obliterated, and America cursed (J82:22–30); she almost parodies Jerusalem’s magnificent monologue in the chapter’s opening scene. As in Plate 79, America is meant to be a place of vision and liberty, but these qualities are (at least for the moment) obscured. In Plate 79 Jerusalem bathes in France and finds bliss in Spain which is paralleled by Gwendolen’s proclamation that Albion’s daughters are to bathe in Moab and find rapture in Babylon (J82:31), the city of Vala. Gwendolen ironically conflates Jerusalem with Jesus, calling her ‘the Friend of Sinners’, and urges that she be sentenced to death ‘without the Veil’—as Christ suffers outside the veiled sanctuary in Hebrews 13.12 (S813). Jerusalem’s ‘Secret Ark’ (her friendly vulva) should be closed (J82:34). ‘The fires of our loins point eastward to Babylon’, Gwendolen proclaims, channeling ‘the Fury of Man’ to the wars in which she and Vala are exalted (J82:35–6). Gwendolen’s ‘Falsehood’ turns the beloved (whether this be Hyle, Reuben, Jerusalem, Jesus, or humanity) into a sacrificial victim. She parodies the Song of Solomon’s erotic landscape where the eyes of the bride are ‘like the fishpools in Heshbon by the gate of Bath-rabbim’ (SoS7.4) (S813). In ‘War & Sacrifice’ Gwendolen nails the hands of Humanity on Bath Rabbim and again ‘on Heshbon’s Wall’ (J82:42–3). In Solomon’s Song (8.6) the bride blissfully longs to be set as a seal upon the arm of her beloved, but Gwendolen cries, ‘O that I could bind him to my arm!’ to perpetuate the ‘Sacrifice of Captives’ (J82:41–4). When she draws aside her Veil, revealing ‘her own perfect beauty’, the deserts tremble and she shrieks and flees, for infant Hyle is a horrid ‘winding Worm’. She is the mother of death (J82:45–51), howling, trembling—yet finally repentant (J82:72–4). Her efforts at control have been in vain. Paley thinks this vignette is a parody of Joanna Southcott’s pregnancy, observing that Gwendolen is no better at producing ‘a man-child unaided . . . than was Joanna Southcott’ (1973: 289). But this observation is open to challenge, for Paley does not mention that when Vala separates from Jerusalem her weaving daughters (including Gwendolen) become rabid materialists. They are obsessed with ‘Atomic Origins of Existence, denying Eternity’ (J67:13); Southcott would never have denied Eternity. Moreover, she did not claim to be producing Shiloh unaided; Southcott had been visited by ‘the power of the Lord’. Blake would not sneer at the possibility of a spiritual Shiloh. As we have seen, Shiloh is the masculine Emanation of France (J49:47); what Albion thinks is the enemy is a land and a woman of peace in fourfold

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vision.12 Southcott, however, supported the war against Napoleon,13 and, like a daughter of Vala, she expected obedience from the men around her.14 Cambel (the Emanation of Hand the warmonger) is oblivious to Gwendolen’s horror and suffering; she only envies her sister’s triumph over Hyle, sending that envy like a virus ‘into the Heart / Of mild Jerusalem to destroy the Lamb of God’ (J82:52–4). To protect Jerusalem Los draws Cambel into his forge and forces her to work. However, that work may propagate ‘Religion hid in War’ (J76:20), for Cambel forms ‘the mighty form of Hand according to her will’ (J82:63). But when Gwendolen enters the visionary workforce, howling repentant over the Hyle she has destroyed, her pity and love start to change the nature of work in the furnaces. She is not binding her masculine counterpart with ‘the iron arms’ of false love as Cambel is doing (J82:71); she seeks to transform the dead Worm she created into a form of living love, and that transformation (born of repentance and sorrow) inspires her deluded sisters to soften their fury, to weave with love, to give of their souls as they labor with Los in his ‘furnaces of Affliction’ (J82:79), which contain an apocalyptic ‘Wine-Press’ (J82:64–5). In Blake the grapes of wrath (Rev.14.18) can become the wine of life. The nature of theology, emotion, and creation can change.

SCENE THREE: LOS ON HIS WATCH (82:80 –8 6 : 4 9) This shift in the nature of the work in the furnaces prepares us (and Los) for the next phase of the action. Here we see (and hear) Los on his watch, and witness the revival and descent of Jerusalem, an image of a culture of peace. Los may be fallible, but when he enters into Urthona, his eternal name, he is ‘keeper of the Gates of Heaven’ (J82:81), like fallible St Peter. As an angel directed Peter, ‘Gird thyself and bind on thy sandals’ (Acts 12.8), so Los/ Urthona goes on his watch, shod and girt in gold (J83:76–7) (P272). Though 8500 years old he retains his youth (J83:52–3), perpetually working to turn arts 12 Colley observes: ‘There was a sense at this time—as perhaps there still is—in which the British conceived themselves as an essentially “masculine” culture—bluff, forthright, rational . . . caught up in eternal rivalry with an essentially effeminate France—subtle, intellectually devious, preoccupied with high fashion, fine cuisine’ (1992: 252). 13 She urged her disciples to ‘obey King & Country’, drawing the sword like Gideon who was ‘ordered to go to war’ (1814: PN106:59). 14 ‘As you the woman first obeyed / But if your Life you’ll now regain / I tell you All to do the same.’ This exhortation (from Joanna) is in a book written by Thomas Foley (one of her ‘Seven Stars’) which is included in her canon (Panacea Society Archives). Also see Southcott 23.34, 40.6, 59.8. Nineteenth-century Shakers expressed similar obedience to their Divine Mother who embodies ‘the only way to God’ in their hymns, ‘Mother’, (composed by Elder Richard McNemar) and ‘Followers of the Lamb’ (Sister Clarissa Jacobs) found in the Sabbathday Lake Archives, Maine (Cohen 1995: 16–18).

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of death to arts of life. Like John on Patmos, he sees the descent of the New Jerusalem (J85–6). As Urthona, Los moves from self-absorbing grief and fury back to compassion for Albion’s Emanation. He works to protect ‘the scorn’d and contemn’d youthful girl’ (J83:7); she hungers like Christ in the wilderness, and suffers for her children as outcast Hagar grieved for Ishmael (Gen.21.16). Filled with concern, Los works to transform the sacrificial violence embodied in ‘Druid masses of stone’, and calls upon the Lamb of God to ‘descend among the Reprobate’ who unite with the redeemed in Los’s vision (J83:9–15). He calls to awaken the English, the Saxons, the Canaanites, and Moabites and free all (from Scandinavia to Tartary) from the sacrificial religion of ‘Woden and Thor and Friga’ (J83:16–22); wars of the flesh are not redemptive. Los begins transforming the ‘Religion Hid in War’ which Golgonooza has been fostering (J75).15 He is starting to create a culture of peace, respecting the erotic, the feminine, his erroneous enemy, and the natural environment. Los can be so creative because (for the moment) he no longer fears his Emanation and the daughters of Albion. In Plate 83 he no longer bullies Enitharmon. As Jesus built Albion a couch of repose (J48), so Los plans one for Enitharmon, his recalcitrant feminine counterpart (J83:26). He looks for his child, Oothoon, probably hiding from ‘Hand the terrible’ in Oxford with Antamon (J83:26–30), who is her brother in The Four Zoas (8:357–63; K350). As we have seen, Oothoon is known for free and joyful love-making (like Jerusalem). In Blake’s Everlasting Gospel (written around 1818 while he was creating Jerusalem) such joyful love-making is a thing ‘On which the Soul Expands its wing’ (ELGe68; K755). Los now wants to protect the Emanations. Just as Erin removed Jerusalem from ravening Albion at the end of Chapter Two (J48:54–63), so Los now declares that Albion’s violent sons should be separated gently from their Emanations (J83:49) who shall weave ‘bowers of delight’ on the Thames. Los no longer seeks to control these women, as he did in Chapter Three (J57:29–31); freely they weave the human body and varying cosmological world views in their golden looms (J83:34–48). Los also plans for the ecology of mind I discussed in Part I, Chapter 5, ‘Jerusalem: The Transfiguring City’, calling us to plant the seeds of cities and villages ‘in the Human bosom’; what we think of as external environments are actually systems emanating from and shaping our interiors. Inside and outside, like the immanent and the transcendent, interrelate. When Albion awakens and Jerusalem emanates into Eternity, ‘the Tribes of Llewellyn’ (conflated with the children of Israel) shall return from their place in America, where they supposedly fled with the Welsh prince

15

For an excellent discussion of the myth of redemptive violence, see Wink (1999: 42–62).

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Madoc and assorted Druids in 1170 (D242–3);16 even fallen America will participate in Jerusalem’s imminent apocatastasis, or restoration. Los is about to leave Golgonooza to spread his song throughout the world, so he exhorts the weaving daughters to keep working and keep watch before his purifying furnaces (J83:61–74). They should not doze like the disciples in Gethsemane (Matt.26.38–42; Mark 14.38–41). As he strides ‘from mountain to mountain’ (J83:76), girded with gold, Los watches all night long with the ‘Dogs of Leutha’ following swiftly at his feet. Leutha, too, is changing. In Chapter One it was associated with filth, sexual shame, and degradation (J31:16–21); here its creatures bring Los companionship and support as he moves from the Thames to the Euphrates, hearing Albion’s daughters who sing lamentations as they work (J83:83–84:29). They have, quite literally, changed their tune. Instead of seeking to destroy Jerusalem (as they did in Plate 80), they now lament that she ‘lies in ruins’. They mourn for constricted Albion and loathe the war industry they upheld, despising the conversion of ‘the gold of Jerusalem’s Cherubims’ to swords and armour (J84:1–10), a desecration implicitly worse than Belshazzar’s disastrous misuse of Jerusalem’s temple vessels in Daniel 5. Albion’s daughters weep for Reuben who wanders homeless through Europe to Blake’s first homes: on Broad Street in childhood; with Basire on Great Queen Street; and with Catherine and his brother Robert on Great Poland Street (J84:1–15) (P273). They weep for what the design depicts: ‘London, blind & age bent begging thro’ the Streets / Of Babylon, led by a child’ (J84:11–12), but this image may be an intimation of Isaiah’s peaceable kingdom where ‘a little child’ shall lead what seem like natural enemies (Isa.11.6). With soft songs the weaving daughters woo Hand, a military tyrant (like the Duke of Richmond), called ‘Double Molech & Chemosh’ after the war gods they served in Chapter Three (J68:18–40). In that chapter they wanted nothing to do with erotic love and everything to do with cruelty and war. Now the daughters woo Hand to subdue him, asking for Los’s help in the peace process (J84:20–7). Making love and not war requires cooperation between Zoas and Emanations; together they can change cultural and physical parameters. In Golgonooza, Los and Enitharmon can shape the stories and context of a culture, the images and metaphors that are taken for granted before social thought begins—which can transform the spaces we inhabit. The shaping of space and time is central to Blake’s cosmology. Feminine Emanations create space; masculine ones create time (J85:7–8). Like a divine Sower (Mark 4.3; Matt.13.4) Los plants ‘seeds of beauty in the Space’, and that transforms the nature of Canaan, formerly a theatre of sacrifice and 16 Owen describes ‘a people west of the Mississippi’, as ‘the descendents of the emigration under the conduct of Madog ab Owain Gwynned in the year 1170’ (1792: xxv), their religion being ‘no more than Noah or Abraham inimical to Christianity’ (1792: xxxviii).

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genocide (J84:2–9). As he sings on his watch he alters the perceptions shaping history (J85:1–6). His song creates ‘Cities not yet embodied in Time and Space’ (J85:27), cities serving the vision of peace embodied by Jerusalem. When the New Jerusalem descends perennial enemies can cohabit, like Isaiah’s peaceful lion and lamb. Los sings Jerusalem into being, going from mountain to mountain and ‘Furnace to Furnace’, attracting all lands with his ‘red Globe of fire’ (J85:19–20). ‘The stars stand still to hear’ (J85:15) as ‘the sun and the moon stood still in their habitation’ in Habakkuk 3.11 (when the Lord marched through the earth with arrows of light and a glittering spear). As Los sings, three Jerusalems appear: one pauses in Ulro, another emanates from Albion’s ‘opacous bosom’, and the third descends as in Revelation 21 (J85:15–86:32).17 Like Christ in the Transfiguration, Jerusalem has a glorified body, ‘shadowing purity in holiness’ (J86:8) her ‘Bosom white, translucent, cover’d with immortal gems’ (J86:14). As the Transfiguration foreshadows Christ’s resurrection in the synoptic Gospels, so Jerusalem’s translucent emanation and descent prefigure the resurrection of Albion and the restoration of humanity with which the poem ends. Jerusalem hovers with translucent wings ‘feather’d gold & azure & purple’ (J86:1–6), six-winged like Isaiah’s seraphim (Isa.6.2). She emanates ‘Holiness to the Lord’ (J86:12), the motto Aaron wears on his forehead in Exodus 28.36, and her body shines with the gems adorning his breastplate (which are the foundation for the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21). Aaron and his priestly sons cover their bodies with robes and coats, and are set apart from the people. Jerusalem is not set apart, and the lineaments of her body are clearly visible. The ‘extreme beauty’ of her jewelled head, lovely bosom, and loins comes from within every human breast and infuses every valley and city (J86:2–16). Jerusalem’s naked beauty is not like the deadly ‘beauty of holiness’ King Jehosaphat worships in 2 Chronicles 20.21–5. That terrible beauty utterly slays and destroys the children of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir. By contrast, when Los beholds ‘the flames of holiness’ of Jerusalem’s loins he sees ‘Israel in her tents’ with ‘Moab & Ammon & Amalek’ dwelling in ‘Comforting sounds of love & harmony’ (J86:22–30). Jerusalem’s holiness does not separate the sacred from the profane; it connects them; the human coinheres with the divine. No one is excluded from Blake’s New Jerusalem. Her feet spread peace throughout what is now called the Middle East. The vision (as we all sadly know) is not yet actualized. We have only glimpsed the culture of peace; the work is not complete. As Los sings, he and his sons, laboring ‘in Thunders’, continue to forge the new creation. The 17 Stevenson (S822–3), Fuller (1988: 213–14), and Paley (P276) all note Blake’s allusions to Isaiah 6, Exodus 28, and Revelation 21–2. I discussed tri-locational Jerusalem in Part I, pp. 140–1.

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daughters, still in Generation, singing woes as they weave, are not all loving and free. Los’s counterpart, Enitharmon, remains abstracted and fearful (J86:33–49). Like disparate cultures, males and females (be they Zoas and Emanations, or husbands and wives) must also develop the wisdom to work together in peace.

SCENE FOUR: BANAL BICKERING (86:50 – 88:54) Enitharmon resents Los’s devotion to Jerusalem and, once again, jealousy obstructs the awakening of Albion and the restoration of human–divine love. The Spectre still assails Los; again he contends with fury, despair, and the desire to control his beloved. He wants to co-create with her, but (as in Chapter One (J12)) Enitharmon divides from him (J86:50–5). As Adam’s ‘earthy Worm’ severs Sophia from Adam in Boehme’s Three Principles (TP12.46–7), so Los’s bitter Spectre severs Enitharmon from his loins (J86:51). Enitharmon may here be a parody of Boehme’s Celestial Virgin (TP12), separated from humanity, fearing sexuality. In Blake’s and in Boehme’s Eden, male and female are not meant to have ‘Two wills . . . Two intellects’ (J86:61). Adam is the wilful one in Boehme’s story, but Enitharmon is in Blake’s. Her ‘sin’ is not lust (as in Boehme’s story) but pride (Selfhood)— exacerbated by fear. Fearing the abuse the daughters have endured, Enitharmon despises Los’s desire. Both she and Los are ‘terrified at each other’s beauty’ (J86:63). Fear infuses their ‘all devouring Love’ with cruelty. They neglect blind Enion here as they do in Blake’s Four Zoas (I:440–4; K276), sending the age-bent mother to wander ‘into the fourfold deserts’ as Jerusalem wanders (J87:1–2). (The blind figure in Plate 87’s design wears Jerusalem’s golden dress.) Los wants Enitharmon to be his creative partner, but Enitharmon has no interest in helping him. She wants to dominate him and when Los declares his love, Enitharmon refuses to participate in the co-creation he suggests (J87:8–11). Instead she creates a defense mechanism (which she calls enigmatically a ‘round Womb’) with which she can dominate men (J87:14). She knows she is entrapped (‘shut . . . in a grave’) by Vala’s deadly fibres (J87:23) and she perverts Christ’s self-annihilating words from Gethsemane (Matt.26.39; Mark 14.36) when she declares she will do ‘not as thou wilt but as I will’ (J87:13) (Fuller 1988: 214). Spectrously infected, she gloats before Los: ‘You are Albion’s Victim; he has set his Daughter in your path’ (J87:24). ‘In scorn & jealousy’ Enitharmon weaves a ‘Female Tabernacle for Moral Law’ (J88:19–22). As we have seen (Part II, pp. 202–4) the ‘Female Tabernacle’, called ‘fleshy’ (J56:40) and ‘scarlet’ (J22:30) in Chapter Two, is the material ‘round Womb’, rendered taboo by the Moral Law that

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represses humanity. Enitharmon (like Vala) creates a perverted Christianity so ‘that he who loves Jesus may loathe, terrified, Female love’ (J88:19–20). Like a siren she sings lulling cadences, trying to enmesh Los in the ‘alternate torments’ of ‘scorn & jealousy’ (J88:22–3). Los resists; he does not become entrapped. He is not as he was in Chapters Two and Three. He knows that Emanations can ‘embrace & comingle’ in ‘mutual interchange’ (J88:4–6), though he is not yet free from Selfhood. He still wants to exercise his ‘Fibres of dominion’ (J88:13). Enitharmon battles against them. The Spectre sniggers in the dusky forge. Thriving on jealousy, he encourages shame and disgust, making ‘places of love & joy excrementitious’ (J88:39). But Los’s strength increases as he wields not only his furious hammer, but also the brazen compasses associated with Urizen and his rational building projects (J88:46–8). Los is using both rational and imaginative equipment to avoid being overwhelmed by the emotional garbage of Enitharmon and the Spectre. Imagination and intellect can reinforce one another; art and science are beginning to reunite. The swing and force of Los’s hammer is now ‘Mercy’ and ‘eternal Forgiveness’ (J88:49–50); love and wrath are reintegrating. Enitharmon wants to disempower the Lamb of God, as she weaves what seems like an imprisoning ‘Female Womb / In mild Jerusalem’ (J88:52–3). Los’s creative furnaces howl as Enitharmon’s weaving wheels thunder in mechanized fury and fear. Such wheels have been destroying Jerusalem throughout the poem, annihilating the forgiveness she can inspire. If Jerusalem is to thrive, the jealousy driving Enitharmon must be overcome. Fear, greed, and Selfhood must be annihilated.

SC EN E F IVE: APOCALY PTIC TRANSFORMATION (88:55– 9 3: 2 7 ) In this scene Jerusalem is annihilated. Like the Woman Clothed with the Sun in Revelation 12 she faces a dragon. Unlike John’s Sun-Woman, she is devoured—but this may be a necessary precursor to the great awakening at the end of the poem. We have seen (Part I, pp. 67–8) that she can be likened to Christ, in whose story crucifixion necessarily precedes resurrection. As Jesus takes on the sin of the world, so Jerusalem takes ‘the Cup which foam’d in Vala’s hand’ (J88:56), a cup like the harlot’s in Revelation (17.4), representing all the sins of Babylon, ‘full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication’. But Vala’s abominable wine is not pressed from ‘fornication’; she and her daughters suppress erotic love to fill the cup with the blood of the victims of ‘Religion Hid in War’ (J65–7). When Jerusalem takes the deadly cup this empowers the self-enclosed hermaphrodite dragon. (It is worth

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remembering that in Blake’s terminology the ‘hermaphrodite’ absorbs people and things; it does not emanate.) Here the hermaphrodite contains the selfish pomp of Church and Temple bureaucracies: ‘the Pharaisaion, the Grammateis, the Presbuterion . . . the Saddusaion’ (J89:6–7).18 Such bureaucracies crucified Christ; they comprise what can be called ‘the Church of Selfhood’.19 This is the church that is ‘the Wheel of Religion’ in the preface to this chapter (J77), the wheel that destroys the liberating religion of Jesus. Now this deadly church appears as a hermaphrodite dragon, winged with six wings, ‘black fill’d with Eyes’ (J89:27), like a fallen seraphim. Antichrist, Druid structures, and the dragon-harlot conflate in this bloated beast called Covering Cherub—an appellation used for the doomed King of Tyre in Ezekiel 28.14–18 who is linked with Albion in Chapter Two (J29:33, 49:73). This dark Cherub, the ‘majestic image of Selfhood’, lacks minute particularity and has no sensual life. Vala’s weaving daughters are working to make the erotic body repulsive (J80:65) and the Cherub dragon, called ‘Body put off’ (J89:9–10) is also denigrating corporeal existence. The first-person narrator can see this shadowy dragon with inward eyes (as Los sees and contends with his invisible spectre in Chapter One (J6–11).) The Covering Cherub, the antithesis of Blake’s redemptive heroine, is as opaque as six-winged Jerusalem is translucent (when she ascends and descends in Plates 85 and 86).20 Jerusalem’s beauty brings mutually beneficial trade (J24:36–50), forgiveness (J22:35), and joy to the world (J79), but the shadowy dragon brings slavery and ‘Religion Hid in War’ (J89:17–54). In Jerusalem’s head, nature and culture shine in holiness to the Lord (J86:6–12), but Antichrist’s brain (the Cherub) harbors ‘Pharoh in his iron Court . . . the dragon of the river’ from Ezekiel 29.3. (This ‘Pharoh’ is like Albion in Chapter One when he repudiates Jesus and Jerusalem, withering nature and culture.) Jerusalem’s bosom holds ‘the River of Life and Tree of Life’ (J86:18), but the Hermaphrodite’s bosom holds generalizing war gods, ‘Molech & Chemosh’, spreading Druid temples of war and sacrifice throughout the world (J89:24–37). Israelites and Canaanites do not dance in harmony (J86:26–30) within the Covering Cherub’s loins: Roman and Babylonian war machines shred Israel there (J89:38–41). Jerusalem is in the dragon’s stomach. She has been eaten (J89:43–4). The opaque Antichrist Dragon spreads death, not life. It is a self-enclosed, self-absorbing system, mustering and devouring innumerable ‘warlike sons’ not only in Britain/Israel, but also among Muslim multitudes ‘in Alla’ (J89:58).21 Again, the peace of Jerusalem seems overshadowed entirely. 18 Blake creates quasi-Greek terminology to point out the pomposity of the Pharisees, Scribes, Elders, and High Priests. 19 Thanks again to Anakin Morris for this observation (2009). 20 Fuller mentions this parallel (1988: 213), as does Stevenson (S828). 21 ‘Allah’ could be spelled ‘Alla’. For dozens of examples, see Eighteenth Century Collections Online—http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet, accessed 26/05/2006.

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As in Chapter Three (J64–9) Druid sacrifice, repression, and war continue to rage throughout Britain (J90), reinforcing Blake’s polemic against the religious and political establishment. The sexes continue to war against one another, and human compassion (‘the Pathos’) is severed from the sublime (J90:13). Los rages against individuals (like Richard Brothers or Joanna Southcott) who appropriate ‘the Universal Characteristics’ of ‘David or of Eve, of the Woman, or of the Lord’ (J90:28–30). That appropriation bloats Selfhood and occludes Minute Particularity. He also rails against ‘Maternal Humanity . . . a Vegetated Christ & a Virgin Eve’ (J90:34–5, 65–6). Paley relates this to Swedenborg’s idea that ‘the Lord Successively put off the humanity taken from the Mother and put on the Humanity from the divinity in Himself’ (P284)22—but the ‘Maternal Humanity’ Los condemns contrasts with Jerusalem’s maternal liberty and love (which coinheres with Christ). It is Vala’s materialist ‘Maternal Humanity’ that fills Albion’s Druid giants with terror and shame, promulgating ‘Ulro Visions of Chastity’ (J55:38). Mocking ‘God & Eternal Life’ and denying Christ’s divinity,23 Deist Druids ‘Vegetate the Divine Vision’, trapping humanity ‘in a corporeal & ever dying Vegetation & Corruption’ (J90:41–2). As Los thunders, Albion’s daughters scream and lament ‘in the burning forge’. Los still fears them. His thunders cry: ‘These beautiful witchcrafts of Albion are gratified by Cruelty!’ (J90:68). In Plate 91 Blake gives Los a magnificent monologue. Los excoriates the sacraments and ceremonies of the established Church, the ‘Church of Selfhood’. He weeps as he does this, not only in righteous indignation but also because he has been injured by Albion, who should be his friend. He weeps because he has been hurt.24 Los rails against those who do not honor gifts of genius in others. Genius is ‘the Holy Ghost in man’. Those who ‘calumniate’ such gifts murder ‘the Holy One’ (J91:8–12). As we know, Blake was devastated by Robert Hunt, whose Examiner reviews lambasted Blake’s work as ‘indecent . . . far-fetched and absurd’ in 1808 (BR258–61)25 and called Blake ‘an unfortunate lunatic’ in 1809 (BR282-83).26 As Mee observes, Hunt was appalled by enthusiasts’ claims of seeing God in the flesh (2003: 277–81). Los commands the Spectre 22

Paley cites Swedenborg’s Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Concerning the Lord, #35. As Priestly did in his History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782). See Porter (2003: 363–5). 24 The friend to whom this alludes might be Thomas Stothard; Blake thought Stothard stole his compositional idea and commission for a picture of Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims (Bentley 2001: 291–304). In his 1809 ‘Descriptive Catalogue’ entry concerning Chaucer’s pilgrims, Blake rails against ‘his competitors’ and the true artist’s fate: ‘to get patronage for others and then to be left and neglected, and his work, which gained that patronage, cried down as eccentricity and madness’ (K572). 25 7 August 1808. 26 17 September 1809. I discussed Hunt in Part I, pp. 50–1. 23

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to overturn the altar, the bread, the cup, and the sacraments of baptism, marriage, and burial to liberate humanity, to make us see ‘the Divinity . . . in [God’s] children’ (J91:13–23). God exists in the minute particulars of enfleshed human beings. Loving those minute particulars leads to loving other particulars and in that network of infinitely particular love Jesus is made manifest. The worship of God is not in ceremonial regulations.27 If sacramental trappings occlude divine vision, then Los must demolish them. The Spectre’s alchemical trappings certainly occlude divine vision. As Los works and weeps, the Spectre repeats ‘the Smaragdine Table of Hermes to draw Los down / Into the Indefinite’ (J91:35–6). The ‘Smaragdine Table’ (or Emerald Tablet) is a basic alchemical text, supposedly found by Alexander the Great in the tomb of Hermes Trismegistus near Hebron. Like Jerusalem’s cosmology in Chapter Three (J71:1–7), the Hermes Table proclaims: ‘What is below is like that which is above and what is above is like that which is below’ (D182). However, whereas Blake seeks to connect elemental entities, the Emerald Tablet separates earth from fire, and the gentle from the gross. It can be used to amass power and gain ‘the glory of the whole world’ (D183).28 The Spectre uses this knowledge to create destructive forces. He reads ‘the Voids between the Stars’ and uses cosmic negativity to form ‘Leviathan and Behemoth’, the war by land and sea (J91:33–41). The biblical Leviathan29 may be the prototype for John’s seven-headed beast from the sea (Rev.13.1), and Behemoth is akin to Revelation’s ‘beast coming up out of the earth’ (Rev.13.11) (Bauckham 1993: 186–95). The Spectre’s bellicose work erects ‘pillars in the deepest Hell’. But Los is not daunted by this; like Christ he is doing the work that can open hell to heaven—as in the poem in the preface to this chapter (J77:34). Furious and weeping, Los suddenly smites his Spectre ‘& at one blow’, he demolishes the Spectre’s (quasi-Masonic?) ‘pyramids of pride’ and his pillars and stars.30 Shattering Druid Babel, Los transforms the images that occlude divine vision. The pyramids become grains of sand, the infernal pillars ‘dust on a fly’s wing’, and spectrous starry heavens (freed from Newtonian fixity) become a moth of gold and silver (J91:42–50). The Spectre is not destroyed; he and his images are changed to images that can (in Blake’s poetry) lead to divine vision. In Blake’s ‘Auguries of Innocence’ we are called to ‘see a world in a grain of sand’ and honor the life of a moth (1:39–40; K431–2). The beauty of 27 Blake does not always despise the sacraments of the Church. He paints the bread, the cup, and the altar as ways through which Christ can be seen in Hervey’s Meditations (c770/pl.967) and in his ‘Vision of the Last Judgment’ (c642/pl.870). 28 Newton had the Tablet translated, which intrigued antiquarians like John Wood (Elliott 2004: 19). 29 Leviathin is called Rahab (another name for Vala) in Isaiah 51.9. 30 As mentioned in Part I, p. 40, pyramids, pillars, and stars appear in Masonic literature and designs.

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the little fly opens into human beauty in Milton (20:25–31; K502). The Spectre is in ‘a separate space’ now; we are moving from the ‘land of shadows’ (J4:6) into realms of day. Los promotes that movement, continuing to work; his fury becomes increasingly creative. He rages against selfish holiness, horrified by the ‘Religion Hid in War’ made in Golgonooza. He sees that what he himself has built perverts divine vision (J75:18–23). He sees warrior cultures amalgamating into the ‘sinful Nation’ of Albion (J92:1–6). Such perception is a precursor to apocalypse, for ‘Whenever any Individual Rejects Error & Embraces Truth a Last Judgment passes upon that Individual’ (VLJ; K613).31 This imminent apocalypse terrifies Enitharmon, for Albion’s awakening could demolish the looms through which she and her deceptive sisters control vegetative life (J92:8–12). Like Eve in Paradise Lost (IX.825–30) she fears, not only extinction, but also that ‘another Female’ will replace her (P287). As if to confirm her fears, Jerusalem rises, gowned in gold, in the design above these words. Jerusalem was last sighted in the dragon’s stomach. Now, in Plate 92, she rises, muscular (almost virile), above four wormy heads (three of which could be those of the triple-headed hermaphrodite which devoured her). A rose wash suffuses the sky in the original Copy E, like the light just before dawn. Jerusalem’s hand gesture resembles that of Blake’s Beatrice blessing Dante in a sphere of flame (c812.93), the wisdom figure blessing Christian in Blake’s Pilgrim’s Progress (c829.14/pl.1106), and Christian’s response to the Christ vision which frees him from his burden (c829.20/pl.976). In an 1805 watercolor, God blesses the seventh day with hands outstretched like Jerusalem’s (c434/pl.511). Divine blessing can overcome the dehumanizing violence that overspreads the earth in Jerusalem’s Chapter Three. Plate 92 is compositionally akin to Plate 70 where a Druid trilithon dominates the central design and its words describe the dominance of Deist Rahab who embodies the abstract philosophy and ideology that destroys divine humanity; Rahab is the ‘feminine power unreveal’d’ (J70:18). In Plate 92’s design, by contrast, we see true feminine power; Jerusalem embodies the forgiveness and liberating strength through which the human can be reunited with the divine. We see her rising. It may seem surprising that Los now cries: ‘Sexes must vanish and cease to be when Albion arises’ (J92:13). This does not, however, negate the feminine power that has just been revealed; her energy coinheres with the masculine. In Blake the feminine is not ‘sexual’, for the ‘sexual’ is what separates the male and female. The ‘male and female’ standing ‘at the gates of each humanity’ (J88:11) are not the same as ‘sexes’ in Blake. Masculine and feminine are vehicles for commingling, connecting individuals to each other and to the 31 Also see John 5.24–5 (‘The hour is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God . . . ’).

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divine32—but the words ‘sex’ and ‘sexual’ are related to Selfhood which objectifies and divides. (In the eighteenth century the word ‘sex’ referred to an objective category, not an activity. ‘Sex’ was used to taxonomize; it was not about infinite sensuality or inward spiritual joy. It had to do with material reality alone.) In Blake the ‘sexual’ is mechanistic, a ‘machine . . . vegetating’ in Selfhood (J44:22–5), generating jealousy, greed, fear, and shame. Unlike Jerusalem’s joyous erotic comminglings, ‘the Sexual’ in Blake does not lead from Ulro to Eden,33 and ‘Sexes’ are merely external or superficial; they ‘appear only in the Outward Spheres’ (J92:19).34 In Blake, ‘sexes’ and ‘the sexual’ serving Selfhood are central to the notion of sin from which Jesus and Jerusalem can deliver us. In Plate 92 Los places Sexes ‘in the Chaos of the Spectre’ with Druids rearing ‘their Rocky Circles’ fostering ‘permanent Remembrance of Sin & the Tree of Good & Evil’ (J92:22–6). Through ‘Remembrance of Sin’ Vala and her daughters use their sexuality to manipulate humanity; and Enitharmon seeks to enforce ‘the Mother’s love of obedience’ (J93:4). Like Albion, she prefers pride to love. Enitharmon complains, not to Los, but to their sons Rintrah and Palamabron. She accuses them of the domineering love she embodies, warning that their ‘pride of dominion’ will divorce them from their Emanations and their land (J93:1–6). Enitharmon thinks Rintrah should seek to please his mother as Reuben did when he brought mandrakes to Leah to increase her generative power (J93:7–9).35 Like Vala in Chapter One (J20), Enitharmon moans about the distress of the ‘little ones weeping along the Valley’ (J93:15), but she does not understand that her own pride fosters this distress. This resembles Boehme’s cosmology, where the desire for domination imbalances the cosmos and the soul, creating outward chaos and inward suffering (A8.141–50, 9.82). Pride exalts the wrath/fire, but love brings light and balance in the embrace of the Bridegroom who is Christ (A8.157–8, 9.18). Enitharmon is not yet interested in embraces, but Los draws near to Christ. Los calls to his harassed sons: ‘[Christ] is become One with me . . . Behold him here! . . . we shall be united in Jesus’ (J93:18–19). The sons can become what they behold and enter into a dynamic divine relationship, overcoming Erotic bliss leads to visionary joy. In a notebook Blake praises ‘the lineaments of gratified desire’ (K178, 180). 33 Sha (2009: 124) mentions that Blake is trying to create a revolution in the way people think about sexuality. Gigante (2009: 477) thinks Blake wants us ‘to reconceptualize generation (and creativity more generally) as a process “far above”—or more comprehensive than—socially sanctioned, heterosexual intercourse within the institution of marriage’. 34 This superficial sexuality creates what Frosch calls ‘genital tyranny’ (1974: 163). In Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell ‘the Genitals [are] Beauty’ (K162), but they are not an end in themselves. They act in concert with the head, heart, and hands. 35 Enitharmon likens the arrogant dysfunctions of Rachel’s and Leah’s biblical family to a new version of Satan’s usurpation in Blake’s Milton; here Satan drives Rintrah’s plow, not Palamabron’s harrow (S839). 32

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guilt, shame, and accusation. Plate 93’s design depicts the threefold accuser of Socrates,36 who is likened to Caiaphas (J93i), synonymous with the fiery Wheel of Natural Religion destroying Jesus when this chapter begins (J77:15–20). In the opening sermon we learned that those who attack the mental gifts of others attack Christ’s body (J77). In Plate 93 Los seeks to uphold mental gifts and deliver his sons from the Natural Religion of Bacon, Newton, and Locke when condemning ‘the Deus of the Heathen’ (J93:23).37 Los clearly proclaims: ‘the God of this World & the Goddess Nature’ are ‘the Druid Dragon & hidden Harlot’ (J93:23–5). Revealing the nature and limitations of the ravening goddess (Vala) destroys the Mystery upon which her power depends. ‘The Morning which was told us in the Beginning’ is about to dawn, Los realizes, as graves thunder beneath him (J93:26–7). In the design beneath these words, a naked Emanation emerges from the earth encased in golden fire. She could be an image of Dinah (J74i), beginning ‘to rise from Generation free’ like the speaker in ‘To Tirzah’ (K220). She might also be Enitharmon or Vala rising free from Selfhood. She could be Britannia, about to rejoin England, prefiguring the reunion of Vala and Jerusalem. The great awakening can be seen in many ways.38 The transformation of institutional, cosmological, and sexual barriers allows the particular gifts of every living creature to contribute uniquely to the restoration of humanity—embodied in Albion.

SCENE SIX: ALBION AWAKENS (94– 9 ) When this final scene begins Albion is dead. ‘Storms and snows beat round him’ as he lies upon his rock, separated from Los’s furnaces, the Starry Wheels, and the tomb built by Jesus and guarded by Erin. He is like an object in a landscape of ‘restless sea waves foaming’ as ‘long thunders’ crash (J94:1–6). England hovers, a damp cloud, above him. A ‘famish’d Eagle screams’, and the wolf of famine howls (J94:7–17). Then, as in Revelation 8.1, a ‘deathlike silence’ descends. ‘Time was finished!’ the poem declares (J94:18), fulfilling the angelic prophecy in Revelation 10.6—and Jerusalem moves into the space between apocalypse and creation. The end is the beginning; what looks like annihilation reveals creation.

36 Blake equates ‘Anytus, Melitus, & Lycon’ with the Hunt brothers (whose Examiner mocked Blake’s art) in his 1810 ‘Public Address’ (K598; The Prophetic Writings of William Blake, I.628). 37 Similarly, Henry More chastises those who consider ‘whether the First Principle of all things should be deemed God or Goddess and be called Deus or Nature’ (1708: 23). ‘Deus’ is the Latin word for ‘deity’ or ‘god’. 38 Blake drew and painted many versions of his ‘Vision of the Last Judgment’.

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‘The Breath Divine’ breathes over Albion, as in Genesis when ‘the spirit of God’ moves over the waters and the divine breath breathes into Adam ‘the breath of life’ (Gen.1.2; 2.7). In Blake’s fluid universe ‘The Breath Divine’ breathes in ‘the Immortal Tomb’ which has moved to surround Albion (J94:19) like a life-giving womb. ‘England who is Brittannia’ is no longer divided into Jerusalem and Vala (as in J36:28). She (the composite Emanation of Albion) awakens, horrified by what repressive chastity and jealousy have done. Though it was Albion who first banished divine love and forgiveness, embracing Druidic violence and promulgating Moral Law, the Emanation takes complete responsibility for his cruelties, crying: ‘I have Murdered Albion! . . . In Stonehenge & on London Stone’ (J94:22–7). Like Shakespeare’s King Lear (IV.7), Albion awakens in pain. He sees England and rises in anger, and that anger is creative. (Anger, or wrath, can come in many varieties. Boehme writes about the resurrecting power of the wrath of God in his Treatise on the Incarnation where the soul emerges from wrath fire (II.12.98), and fierce wrath can be ‘separated from the Pure’ (III.4.5). Pure wrath is divine energy.) Filled with creative anger Albion walks into the heavens, ‘clothed in flames’ (J95:7). Like the angelmorphic Enoch who walks through ‘the paths of stars and lightnings’, entering into ‘a tongue of fire’,39 Albion walks with ‘broad flashes of flaming lightning & pillars /Of fire’ (J95:6–7). Like God he speaks ‘Words of Eternity in Human Forms’ moving ‘thro’ the Four Elements’, the four Zoas (or life principles) who are within and around him (J95:7–11). Albion’s creative wrath propels him into Eternity. This may be influenced by the journey in Boehme’s Threefold Life where the ‘New Adam’ must go through ‘the Abyss of the Four Elements into the Hellish Fire of the Wrath’ to bring his soul to ‘the Paradise of God’ (TFL5.142). In the same way Albion is moving beyond his self-created shadowy abyss; we, moving with him, are called to see ‘the Sun in heavy clouds / Struggling to rise’ (J95:11–12). Albion is becoming one with the fiery sun.40 With the sun, Albion is rising and changing; we see him in his spiritually risen body. Plate 95’s design depicts a youthful Albion rising, like Los, in white light or flame. Rising above the husk of his Urizenic bearded form, he has put off ‘the old man, which is corrupt’ (Eph.4.22). As in 1 Corinthians 15.51–4 (and Handel’s Messiah) Albion is ‘raised incorruptible . . . in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye’—and we see from Blake’s design that Albion’s ‘raised . . . spiritual body’ although changed, is substantial, not ethereal. Blake’s raised and rising bodies have something in common with Boehme’s, who writes in his Mysterium Magnum: ‘the true Body . . . as the Gold in the Ore . . . is created See ‘Concerning Jude’ (1801), p. 22. Blake made five illustrations for the Book of Enoch (c827.1–5; pl.1079–83). For more on Enoch’s angelmorphism, see Fletcher-Louis (1997: 146–56). 40 As Blake becomes one with Los in the sun in Milton (M22:4–14; K505); this may be based upon his own ‘conversion’ experience. See his 1802 letters to Butts (K814–819). 39

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indeed in Flesh and Blood but in a fixed steadfast [incorruption]’ (MM16.1–16.3). In his Aurora Boehme compares the spiritual body to the angelic bodies of Moses and Elijah at the Transfiguration and promises ‘we shall get the Angelical Clarity or Glory, and Purity again’ (A.5.5). Blake’s restored angelmorphic bodies, moving in ‘direful / Revolutions of Action & Passion’ (J95:9–10), are translucent and dynamic, emanating beauty and life like the sun, ‘Struggling to rise above the mountains’ (J95:12). Like the Hyperion Blake painted for Thomas Gray’s Progress of Poesy (c335.46/pl.343), Albion shines in the fiery sun, shooting ‘arrows of flaming gold’ from his huge bow (J95:13). Jesus has such a bow in Blake’s illustrations to Milton’s Paradise Lost, and its radiant arrow emanates from his heart (c529.7/pl.638; c536.7/pl.651). Albion’s cosmic arrows compel Urizen to return to the plow, Tharmas to his sheepfold, and Luvah to his loom (J95:16–19). Throughout the poem, weaving has been women’s work. Now sexual restrictions have vanished. Zoas and Emanations can co-create. Los is in his eternal form; he is called Urthona. Albion sees him, ‘labouring at His Anvil in the Great Spectre Los unwearied’ (J95:19). As Urthona, Los wields what Boehme calls ‘the right hammer . . . that awakens the poor captive soul’ (TI 18).41 (Those who labor without God’s hammer ‘are but jugglers’, Boehme declares. They wield ‘Hammers for the Belly, Hammers for the Ear’.) Los/Urthona now works freely and creatively, no longer constricted by ‘Religion hid in War’. While Los (called Urthona in Eternity) is working with furious love, the process of reintegration within Albion is taking place. Albion is moving from Ulro to Eternity, but he has not fully arrived. His Emanation enters into him, not yet in her Eternal name of Jerusalem, but as ‘England, who is Brittannia’. She enters into his bosom, ‘Rejoicing in his indignation’ (J95:22–3). Blake himself may be speaking when the narrator declares: ‘She who adores not your frowns will only loathe your smiles’ (J95:25). Men and women can be great friends, and friendship allows for indignation and rebuke. Blake’s relationship with Catherine may have included stormy quarrels. From her he may have learned that ‘Opposition is True Friendship’ (MHH17; K157). Expressing wrath to a friend dissipates it in Blake’s ‘Poison Tree’ in Songs of Experience (K218). Not speaking your mind can be deadly as it is in Shakespeare’s Lear, which ends with the prophetic epigram: ‘The weight of this sad time we must obey / Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say’ (V.iii.322–3). Fourfold vision is not polite. In Plate 96 Albion begins to see with the eyes of his imagination; he is no longer blinded by empiricism. He can see Jesus who appears as the Good Shepherd from John’s Gospel (10.11, 15) to save the lost sheep from Matthew

41

In Jeremiah 23.29 the word of the Lord is ‘like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces’.

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18.12–13 (S843). He can see ‘the Lord, the Universal Humanity’ (J96:5). He says he sees him in ‘the likeness & similitude of Los my friend’ (J96:7). Jesus is not ‘a God afar off’; he is ‘a brother and a friend’ (J4:18). Albion finally sees what is there in the beginning, what is in Eternity: Los is Jesus who is the Universal Humanity. When he sees Jesus, Albion also sees his own cruel Selfhood, marching in patriarchal pomp ‘like a Serpent of precious stones & gold’ (J96:12). He recoils, horrified; he thinks he deserves to be crushed. But Blake’s Jesus is not interested in obliterating Albion—or any ‘sinner’. Jesus (incarnate in Los) says he will die so that Albion may live. Then the dark Covering Cherub envelops them (J96:8–20), like the Covering Cherub dragon that encompassed and devoured Jerusalem (J89). We have seen how she emerged, statuesque, from the dragon’s stomach (J92i). Destruction can be creation. Forgiveness transforms. The Albion-Los/Jesus interchange draws upon the notion of divine love expressed in 1 John 4.7–10: ‘ . . . let us love one another for love is of God, and everyone that loveth is born of God . . . Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son.’ When Jesus dies in Blake, he is not a sacrificial victim. He models a way of living. ‘Every kindness to another is a little Death in the Divine Image’, Blake’s Jesus says. ‘Man is love as God is love.’ Humanity cannot exist without continual kindness, forgiveness, and resurrection (J96:20–8). In Plate 96’s design the old man Albion rises, embraced by his naked Emanation. She embodies Boehme’s soul-embracing love, changing wrath/fire to paradise life (FQ5.6–10). When the Covering Cherub’s dark cloud separates Albion from Jesus who is Los, Albion is terrified, not by what might happen to him, but at the danger ‘his friend divine’ may be facing. With that sudden surge of compassion Albion is finally freed from Selfhood (J96:29–32). Now he becomes like what he beholds, behaving like his divine friend. Like Los in Chapter Two (J43), Albion rouses Eternal cities and British-Israelite counties. He throws himself ‘into the Furnaces of Affliction’ and must be wonderfully surprised when the consuming fires become ‘Fountains of Living Water flowing from the Humanity Divine’ (J96:35–7). He can swim in the water of life (Rev.22.1);42 repentance leads to transfiguring forgiveness. Now that Selfhood is lost, the entire cast of Jerusalem constellates within Albion’s bosom to face Jesus (J96:38–43), but this Last Judgment is not grim. Incorporating in Albion, the Zoas release arrows of love; Urizen, Tharmas, Urthona (Los), and Luvah shoot those flaming arrows together as one man, entering the Divine Body (J97:5–11). Connolly thinks Blake’s conception of the Divine Body is ‘overridingly male’ (2002: 220), an interpretation which unfortunately marginalizes

42

See Blake’s 1805 watercolor ‘River of the Water of Life’ (c525/pl.586).

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Jerusalem. She believes this scene, depicting Blake’s ‘human centered rather than God-centered’ heaven, challenges stultifying hierarchies in a vision of male homosexual intercourse (2002: 209–20);43 she thinks Zoas grasp phallic bows, shooting phallic arrows (2002: 211–12). But we can see that Blake’s vision is both human-centered and God-centered; Blake’s vision goes beyond binary thinking. Like an ellipse it can have two centres. The human can be divine, the divine can be human, and the human form divine is both male and female, as is the bow with which the Zoas shoot. Blake says ‘the Bow is a Male & Female’; humanity can ‘grasp firm between the male and female loves’ (J97:12–15).44 And Jerusalem, feminine and divine, is at the centre of this vision. The Emanation, England who is Brittannia, is also Jerusalem, the bride of Christ (and of all humanity). When the daughters and sons (J96:39) coinhere in Albion they cry: ‘Awake, Awake Jerusalem!’ (J97:1). Without her, humanity cannot be restored. Jerusalem is like Boehme’s ‘true angelical life’ emerging beyond the four elements ‘out of the fire’ to turn ‘the properties of the eternal Nature’ back to paradise (MM15.49). Blake sees Albion’s Divine Family as the redeemed Universal Father who is also the divine bridegroom (J97:6–7), and this bridegroom is not complete without a bride. Freed from jealousy, he and his Zoas call as Solomon sings (SoS.2.10–13): ‘for lo! the winter is past . . . ’. They45 cry: For lo! the Night of Death is past and the Eternal Day Appears upon our Hills. Awake, Jerusalem, and come away! (J97:3–4)

Jerusalem is being called to her divine marriage like the bride in Revelation whose nuptial feast follows angelic war (Rev.21–2). In Jerusalem, nuptial consummation melds war with love: fiery wrath and radiant forgiveness can coalesce—as Albion and all four Zoas use their elemental ‘Male & Female’ bow/s of gold, silver, brass, and iron to annihilate ‘the Druid Spectre’ (J97:12–98:6). Boehme’s visions feature similar imagery. The original human form was and is androgynous (TP12; MM.11.28); the body resembles a cross-tree (FQ1). It leads from ‘the Fire-life into the Life of Light’. It bends as a bow ‘and will shoot away Babel’, or Selfhood (FQ1.244–60). Shooting away Selfhood in Blake, in ‘Wars of mutual Benevolence, Wars of Love’ (J97:12–17) may sound violent, but it is energizing and creative. Militaristic language can be used to express transformative love. When reading the Book of Revelation as an apocalyptic war scroll, Richard Bauckham discusses how John uses militaristic language to forge ‘a new symbol of conquest by sacrificial death’. The martyrs are the victors (1993: 43

She expands upon Hobson’s (2000: 142) interpretation of this plate. A bow is more like a vulva than a phallus; inserting and shooting an arrow from the bow can have erotic connotations. 45 The Divine Family/Universal Father are both one and many. 44

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215–35). By contrast, Blake reshapes John’s militaristic imagery to forge a vision in which forgiveness eclipses the notions of ‘victory’ or ‘defeat’. Blake’s Four Zoas are as ferocious as the Apocalypse’s Four Horsemen (Rev.6.1–8), but their ‘Arrows of Love’ turn the forces of conquest, battle, famine, and death into ‘Wars of Love’, bringing eternal life to all; the ‘Victory’ (to which Albion was formerly addicted in Plate 4) becomes a moot point, as does condemnation. In Revelation those who would destroy the Lamb are condemned to eternal fire. But in Blake’s vision, the Zoas’ flaming arrows open hidden hearts, annihilating Selfhood, so that even the most troublesome creatures can be incorporated into the Divine Body. No one is excluded. In Revelation, John’s apocalyptic warriors ‘are not defiled with women for they are virgins’ (Rev.14.4)—but Blake’s Zoas and Emanations commingle erotically and enthusiastically. In Blake, virginity obstructs divine vision (J55:66). Moreover, divine vision involves the reunion of art and science. Rational science, represented by ‘Bacon & Newton & Locke’, has hitherto been opposed to poetic imagination, represented by ‘Milton & Shakespear & Chaucer’; but now they appear unified in the heavens, forming ‘a Sun of blood red wrath’, or energy (J98:8–10). Intellectual differences generate great energy as they do in Milton’s Areopagitica, where ‘much arguing’ and ‘many opinions’ are integral to the battle for beleaguered truth (1792: 56). In Jerusalem’s Plate 98 the glorious clash of creative and analytical differences surrounds heaven ‘on all sides around’ as ‘Sexual Threefold’ chariots lead to fourfold vision (J98:10–11). Even the ‘Sexual’ is redeemed, infused with furious spiritual energy to propel us into the Divine Body. As in eighteenth-century Moravian Christianity, sensual joy is integral to participation in the Saviour’s Kingdom. In Plate 98 we see how the nature of the reintegrated body, growing infinitely translucent and beautifully distinct, is expanding. When each creature stands ‘Fourfold’ expanding ‘in Rivers of bliss’, the body and its orientations expand (J98:15–20). We need not be confined by gender, space-time, or a mundane epidermis. A fourfold human is freed from ‘the excrementitious husk and covering’; the body is like stained glass, a glorious vehicle through which the light of the soul can burst. Blake may have been influenced by the passage in Young’s Night Thoughts where ‘Death bursts the involving cloud’ of the body and ‘all is day, / All eye, all ear, the disembodied power’ (NTIII.60), though we know Blake’s ‘cloudburst’ does not disembody. It transfigures our lineaments and our senses, flooding them with life-giving beauty. Death and resurrection are part of one whole; together they are a process through which we enter eternal and erotic life ‘among the Flowers of Beulah’ (J98:21), the place of romantic commingling. Identity is heightened ‘in Forgiveness of Sin which is Self Annihilation; it is the Covenant of Jehovah’ (J98:23). In this Covenant judgment and accusation are no longer possible as the Lord declares in Jeremiah:

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I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts and will be their God and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more. (Jer.31.33–4)

‘Forgiveness of Sins which is Self Annihilation’ (J98:23) spreads throughout the Zoas, into our expanding senses, into the structure (the ‘Cardinal Points’) of the cosmos, flowing in ‘Rivers of Paradise’ (J98:24–5). In this spiritual and sensual ecosystem all things obstructing the lineaments of human divinity are cut away (J98:18–20). Every created being can converse ‘in Visionary forms dramatic . . . Creating Space, Creating Time’ (J98:28–31). When we enter into the Divine Body we are not confined by space and time; we can use space and time as ingredients with which we create. Boehme describes how ‘the inward divine man should play with the outward . . . as God plays with Time of this outward World’ (MM16.10). In fourfold vision, childhood, maturity, and death become places we can revisit and shape (J98:30–4). Each element of the Divine Body is in a creative dance,46 a cosmic orgasm. In Philippians 3.20–1: ‘Our conversation is in heaven’, and in that heavenly converse the Lord Jesus Christ ‘shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body’. In Blake, that fashioning has erotic resonance, for in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ‘conversation’ could connote sexual intercourse.47 In fourfold vision human sensuality weaves in and with God, whose body includes stars, worms, and every person within its translucent lineaments. This may be akin to what early church fathers called perichoresis, the interpenetrating movements of love within the Trinity.48 But Blake’s God is more than triune; fourfold vision includes humanity in the divinely erotic dance. Every creature can coinhere with every other, walking ‘to & fro in Eternity as One Man’ (J98:39). Every creature, including ‘the all wondrous Serpent’, enters into human divinity, transfigured by Jehovah’s Covenant, ‘the Forgiveness of Sins’ (J98:42–5). Dortort observes that the earth’s creatures seem bewildered in fourfold vision (1998: 371–2). They are amazed to be free from the Druid spectre, crying out from all nations of the earth and from Golgonooza. Everything has changed. When Selfhood is annihilated, the Druid war culture of Priam’s Troy and Britain/Israel disappears. Categories of good and evil dissolve, along with poverty and taxation (J98:46–53). In Jerusalem the body politic exploits no one, for all interrelate, energizing the human form divine. 46

For more on the divine dance metaphor, see Lash (1986: 154–7). See the Oxford English Dictionary. ‘Criminal Conversation’ is a legal term for adultery (Tomlin’s Law Dictionary, 1809; Black’s Law Dictionary, 1957). 48 Fiddes discusses perichoresis as a divine dance or cosmic liturgy (2000: 204–6), citing Hilary (de Trinitate 9.69) and Cyril of Alexandria (de Trinitate, Dial. 3.467C). 47

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There are no inanimate objects. In fourfold vision ‘even Tree, Metal, Earth & Stone’ (J99:1) have human form (J99:2). In Boehme’s Mysterium, stones and metals have a ‘two-fold essence’ and can participate in ‘the manifested Wonders of God’ (MM16.10). In Luke 19.40 Jesus tells the Pharisees that stones could cry blessings as he enters into Jerusalem, and when Blake paints that scene the trees hold human (or angelic) forms as all praise Christ (c422/ pl.515).49 In Jerusalem’s Plate 99 stones and metals, like worms and seeds, fully enter into the song which is the Divine Body. There is no hierarchical great chain of being with rocks at the bottom and God on top. All things move through ‘the planetary lives of years, months, days, and hours’, resting and awakening in the bosom of God (J99:3–4). Planets are human, as in Boehme’s Aurora where they play both spiritual and cosmic roles (A.26.17–40). In Blake’s Four Zoas ‘one planet calls to another & one star enquires of another’ (FZIX:261; K364). A face that gives light can become a star in his ‘Proverbs of Hell’ (MHH.7:9; K151). In fourfold vision we enter into planetary lives as we do into the life of a moth, a Zoa, and Jesus. Each of those lives shapes space and time differently. Being in and with the divine family we expand and we contract, infinitely interconnecting in a new name as prophesied in the Book of Revelation (2.17; 3.12), ‘the new name of the city of my God’. That is Jerusalem, the new song (Rev.5.9). Hers is the name of the Lord which makes heaven and earth (Ps.124.8). Jerusalem embraces a white-bearded man in greenish flames in the poem’s penultimate design. Stevenson suggests that the naked figure can be seen both as Jerusalem and as the prodigal son returning to the father (S849). According to Samuel Palmer, Blake could not read that parable (Luke 15) without tears coming to his eyes (P296). Throughout the poem, Albion has been wasting his divine patrimony, finally returning to the forgiveness embodied in his Emanation (as Shakespeare’s Lear returns to his daughter). Yet ironically, Jerusalem may be seen as the prodigal here. Having taken on Albion’s sin, she contains the prodigal, as she contains Vala. She, too, is a form of the universal humanity. S/he can be seen as an androgynous character (Mitchell 1978: 214). Where, we must ask, are the figures in Plate 99 located? The facsimile does not show us the plate’s true colours. In the original Copy E, a green wash suffuses the flames of the embrace and the blue sphere behind the old man’s halo looks convex. ‘They’re in a hole’, John Monahan replied without hesitation, when I questioned him. His colleague at the Yale Center, Adrianna Bates, suggested that the figures are being lifted out of the grave. The plate could depict the resurrection of the dead,50 but as we know, in Jerusalem the land of the dead is not separate from heaven (J3, 77:34). In Boehme’s Threefold Life paradise is also in the grave: ‘It is entirely everywhere’ (TL5.125)—as it is in 49 50

In the original at Pollok House the human-divine dryads are quite apparent. Conversation at the Yale Center for British Art, 27 April 2005.

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Philippians 2.10 where ‘things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth’ pay homage to the divine Name. In the Song of Jerusalem life and death, earth and heaven, male and female, art and science, flesh and spirit: all coinhere. That coinherence is sensual and ontological—as well as spiritual and metaphorical. Plate 99 is not just an allegorical emblem; it depicts the rapturous moment just before erotic consummation. Jerusalem and Albion are rising within the earth in heavenly flames and ‘the time of love’ (J20) with its orgasmic ‘holy raptures of adoration’ (J79:44) is spreading forgiveness and life within and throughout the earth, within and between each living thing. Like every ‘Tree, Metal, Earth & Stone’ we can participate in that rapture (J99:1). We are all in the Song of Jerusalem. We are each in the Divine Body.

ETERNAL INTERVAL (100) ‘I felt something like a resurrection in myself and then all the others made sense’ Francis Gilbert reading the Eternals at Sutton Courtenay

When the poem ends we are with all living things, awakening into life in the bosom of the Divine Body. The great awakening does not, however, happen because of Los’s work (or anyone’s work); it happens when ‘the Breath Divine breathes’, animating Jerusalem who is within and around us all. She may be akin to the Spirit/Bride at the end of the Book of Revelation, inviting all who are thirsty to come and drink. No one is excluded from the river of life and tree of life. Forgiveness is a social structuring principle. Poverty, oppression, and war disappear. With Blake’s angelmorphic characters, we can create space and time, sculpting the past, present, and future all at once. We can go beyond Ulro’s linear time to imaginative eternity. The end of the poem can be a beginning.

Curtain Call (Plate 100) David Erdman calls Plate 100 ‘the curtain call’ (1974: 379)—but the identity of the three actors is not clear, nor is the nature of the Druid set behind them. Jerusalem’s final enigmatic image gives rise to a variety of interpretations. For instance, Erdman thinks Los is centre stage, flanked by ‘the spectre of Urthona’ (bearing the sun) and ‘the poet’s emanation, Enitharmon’ (beside the moon) (1974: 379). Wicksteed thinks the central figure is the universal humanity, flanked by the masculine and feminine divine (1954: 251), who

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might also be Apollo and Artemis.51 Paley thinks the ‘Druid’ temple becomes the structure of the millennial Jerusalem on earth (though not of the celestial city) and thinks that the ‘three workers’ are ‘parts of a still-divided being’ (P297). I, on the other hand, have no wish to place a fixed label on these figures or their task. Are they meant to make us wonder about them? If we cannot name or categorize the creatures we encounter (as habitually happens in Ulro), then we have to meet them with an open, questioning attitude (as is appropriate in Eternity). Initially I think the central figure is Los; he looks like Los, he has a big Los hammer—but he also has the compasses associated with Urizen. We have just seen (in Plate 98) that art and science conjoin in the sexual chariot of the universal humanity, so perhaps the central figure is humanity, or Albion. In copies A and C, Albion looks like this Los-figure when he contemplates Christ in Plate 76—and in all copies he rises, Los-like, from the husk of his old body in Plate 95. However, in Plate 96 Albion is still an aged bearded patriarch and Jesus is indistinguishable from (and incarnate in) Los. Could the central figure be Los-Jesus? Does that figure raise questions about the relationships between Albion, Jesus, Los, Urizen, and humanity? The naked male figure carrying the sun (stage right) is rising from the earth. Is he a form of Los? Is he the Spectre redeemed? How is he related to the fullyclothed figure in the frontispiece, carrying an orb of light across a dark threshold? We cannot see his face; like Moses before God (Exodus 33.23) we can see only the ‘back parts’ of Blake’s sun-carrier; could he be God? He may be taking the sun away, and we may be soaring with him and the sun. The dark lady (stage left) may have a spindle; she may have a distaff (Hilton 1983: 116–17). Is she winding up or spinning out threads of blood through the moon? Blood is associated with both life and death; creation and decay are part of one whole. Our dark lady may be Vala (creating material bodies in the time of love) or Enitharmon or any weaving daughter of Albion (and that includes me)—concentrating on her work, unencumbered by a veil. Her work may be contributing to the gifts of Art and Science (J77) which ‘cannot exist but by Naked Beauty display’d’ (J36:49). All three figures stand here in ‘Naked Beauty’. Are they building Jerusalem? Perhaps the Druid temples have been redeemed—or perhaps they remain malevolent, pulling us back into the state of Generation, even Ulro. Participating in ‘the Planetary lives of Years, Months, Days & hours’ (J99:3) could mean returning again to error or rebirth, an idea expressed in the Bhagavad-Gita. Blake drew Charles Wilkin ‘translating the Geeta’ as a Brahmin (K583) and could have known that in the ‘day of Brahma’ the universe dissolves and is again reproduced (P297). As Eden is everywhere present, so may Ulro be also. 51 Patmos was sacred to Apollo and Artemis when John wrote Revelation, but Blake probably did not know this. For more about first-century Patmos, see Sklar (2009: 300); Boxall (2006: 10–11).

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Readers must build Jerusalem continually; ‘little ones’ continually require love and care. As heaven, earth, and hell can coexist simultaneously, so can many states of being, many ways of seeing. Jerusalem may be read synchronically (or holistically) as well as sequentially. The poem can be a ‘timescape’, in which images morph into one another. We have read Jerusalem like a book, perusing it page by page. For an encore, let us unroll it like a scroll to see the patterning of time, imagery, action, and characters—as a director would do before staging a production. This production need not be confined by mundane space and time.

Encore: Into Eternity ‘Heaven is everywhere present. It is but the turning in of the Will into the Love of God’ Jacob Boehme (Way to Christ, IV.98)

In fourfold vision divine humanity goes forward ‘from Eternity to Eternity’ (J86, 98:23–7). Having entered into Eden/Eternity we may now, in conclusion, consider the multifaceted nature of eternity in Jerusalem. We can read the text holistically (without time constraints) as well as sequentially. This involves thinking like both an actor and a director: an actor gets behind the eyes of a character; a director holistically orchestrates the relationships between those characters—as well as the production’s sets, lights, sound, and special effects. Like Blake’s characters and images we need not be confined by linear time and measurable space. As there are different states of being so there are different kinds of eternity and time in Jerusalem: linear (in Ulro), cyclical (in Generation), emotional (in Beulah), embodied (in Eden/Eternity). Characters, imagery, and settings interact differently in these different states of being, and the different states can coexist simultaneously (as in Plates 85–6, when Jerusalem mourns in Ulro and descends as a bride in Eternity). Additionally, action can be happening in the past and future, as well as in the present. As he writes, Blake says: ‘I see the Past, Present, and Future existing all at once!’ (J15:8).1 Like the Book of Revelation, Jerusalem can be seen synchronically (i.e. holistically, like a painting)—as well as diachronically (i.e. sequentially, like a story). We have read the text as a story; now let us see it as a multifaceted whole. To do so, it is necessary to understand what Blake means by Eternity.

VARIOUS ETERNITIES Jerusalem’s eternities overlap and can include one another. The noun ‘Eternity’ appears fifty-six times in the poem. The adjective ‘Eternal’ occurs sixty-eight 1

Could this allude to Rev.1.8?

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times and is linked with ‘Death’ twenty-six times and with hell and various torments twelve times. Eternity is not the same in Eden, Beulah, Generation, and Ulro. Linear Ulro is replete with ‘Eternal Death’ and theological terror, engendered by the notion of a vengeful god. Vala thrives on this terror, moaning ‘in an eternal condemnation’ (J80:13), manipulating Albion and his children by tabulating their sins, filling them with fear and shame. Eternal torments accumulate in Ulro’s linear infinity (J10:44–6), where Albion’s fallen children ‘form Heavens & Hells in immense / Circles, the Hells for food to the Heavens’ (J49:61–2). Cycles of violence are like an eternal food chain; every action generates a vengeful reaction. Albion could eternally fall and eternally be lost (J40:31–41) in Ulro’s inexorable ‘world of Shapes’ (J54:24). Cyclical Generation is more fluid. Its eternally recurrent cycles of birth, copulation, and death can lead away from Ulro, or back into it—as when Urizen builds ‘a World of Generation’ (J58:50–1) with Newtonian ‘singlevision’ (K818). Los, however, builds the great and eternal city of Golgonooza, ‘continually building & continually decaying’ (J53:18–19), which opens from ‘the Shadowy Generation’ through the erotic bliss of Beulah to fourfold vision (J98:55). ‘Holy Generation!’ can be an image ‘of Regeneration’ (J7:65). In erotic Beulah the masculine creates time and plants seeds of beauty in feminine space (J85:6–9); time is no longer chronological. Like Blake’s characters, time and space commingle and coinhere in something like a dance (J69:22–3). In Beulah space and time are not quantitative entities; they are qualitative, infused with vulnerable emotion, bringing both joy and woe. Erotic energy shapes the quality of life and death; it brings bliss and funeral urns (J11:2; 53:28), the funeral arks (J89:60) through which the dead burst into resurrection (J97–8). Huge and beautiful flowers blossom in Beulah’s erotic eternity, leading to the heaven one can find in a wild flower (see ‘Auguries of Innocence’, K431). Beulah is not an end in itself, however. If it becomes enclosed or narcissistic, Selfhood blights its delights and can pull us back to the ‘Sleep of Ulro’ (J4:1). The bliss of Beulah does not free us from the Mundane Shell of space and time, woven with Vala’s veil. It is Jesus who shatters the shell, bringing us back to fourfold Eden/Eternity. By ‘breaking thro the Central Zones of Death & Hell’ he ‘Opens Eternity in Time & Space, triumphant in Mercy’ (J75:21–2). This ‘Eternity’ is not an abstraction; Eternity is embodied in Jesus. When we see Jesus in a wave of flame, marked by crucifixion (J35i) he is unconfined by death or space, creating human forms: we see him in Eternity. With Los we see Jerusalem in Eternity: when she descends as a bride she dwells in eternity, she reflects eternity, and the flames of her loins shine ‘from Eternity to Eternity’ (J86), bringing peace between nations. In Eden/Eternity her loins are more than a source of bliss; the birthplace of the Lamb is the place of ‘mutual forgiveness between enemies’ (J7:66). She is the mother of us all and in Eternity we are

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born from those translucent loins. In Eden/Eternity we live in Jesus; we live in Jerusalem: we live in a Divine Body. In Eden/Eternity we can play with space and time, sculpting a world animated by continual forgiveness. Like an Eternal we can contract or expand (J38:17); we can go forward, backward, inward (microcosmically), outward (macrocosmically)—to the gates which open into Eden. We can find these gates in Golgonooza (J13:5–36), in Los (39:1–5), in Erin’s rainbow (J48:36–9). Through those imaginative gates we can move between different kinds of time: linear, cyclical, and emotional time interrelate; in divine time incarnation, crucifixion, creation, resurrection, and transfiguration are always happening. ‘Eternal Resurrection’ is stronger than ‘Eternal Death’ and when they meet, the vegetative mortal body of Generation enters into Eternity’s cosmic Christ (J98). As an Eternal (human-divine) we can live under the earth, upon it, and in the heavens, singing with all living creatures (J99) as in Revelation 5.13. Blake’s human divinity is as flexible as Boehme’s, where Father and Son meld in the sun (TL13.28–31); the sun is the heart of God (TP5.10–13) which is ‘the Goddess in the Third Principle’ (TP8.12–22), the ground of nature and the light of this world, Christ and Sophia, interfused with the stars into one body (A25.45–90). The starry heavens are not separate from the eternal body. In Jerusalem universal humanity enters into the sun-body (J95:5–13, 98:7–11); cosmic beings are within us and around us. Like Blake’s characters we can be encompassed by the sun, moon, and stars (J95:5–14, 98:7–11)—and we can carry them (J1, 24i, 97i), haul them (J8i, 20i), work with them (J36i 57i, 73i), or hold them within us (J2i, 25i). In Eternity what seems to be small can hold what looks big. Our divine bodies are not confined by mundane space and time.

CHARACTER SYNCHRONISMS As we have seen, Blake’s characters are uncannily fluid: they can bilocate and they can appear in various forms simultaneously.2 Luvah howls, sealed in a furnace, while contending with Albion outside that furnace (J29–30); three Jerusalems appear as Los sings (J85–6); Albion is both young (J76i; 95i) and old (J96i) when he rises. Albion dies several times and in different ways.3 He dies and is disemboweled at the end of Chapter One (J24:60, 25i) and dies and falls into the Saviour’s arms in Chapter Two (J47:18–48:4). He falls from Eternity in 2

In The Continuing City Paley begins to map out the synchronic action of many characters (1983: 305–11). I am expanding upon his excellent insights. 3 Blake appended his signature in the autograph album of William Upcott (in 1826): ‘ . . . Born 28 Nov 1757 in London & has died several times since’ (K781).

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Chapter Three (J54:6–7) to lie dead again upon his rock in Chapter Four (J94). Though dead he repeatedly enthrones Vala and/or spectrous England in his bosom (J33–4, 54). Vala (Jerusalem’s shadow) is particularly fluid. She is called Rahab who is also Tirzah; she contains Albion’s furious daughters whose repressed feminine power fosters war. The Deist war machine (J49–50) coinheres with Vala/ Rahab’s Druid destruction projects (J70) as Vala’s death shuttles sing (J31, 41, 66, 71, 79). She can be seductive but she also moans and whines like the sniggering Spectre. Together Vala and the Spectre embody the banality of evil as Luvah howls, sealed in a fiery furnace. Luvah, like Albion, is repeatedly destroyed. Vala consigns him to the furnaces (J7:30–6) and Albion claims to have murdered him (J22:31) even though he still contends with him (J24). The Daughters divide Luvah into three bodies as he falls from Vala’s shrunken bosom (J29:79, 34:36). He is crucified like Christ (J65), while spreading war throughout Europe and Asia (J62) as Albion’s fallen sons, infused with his fury, form ‘One Great Satan’ (J49:27). Luvah is identified with the satanic state (J49:66–70), a state of being from which all may be delivered. Los works within and between different states of being—and he can be in several states at once. In Eden/Eternity he is an incarnation of Jesus; in Beulah he loves and longs for Enitharmon; in Generation he never stops working; in Ulro he can be a tyrannical misogynist, blighted by Selfhood. He is our hero because even in Ulro he keeps trying to build Jerusalem. His work, however, is not always redemptive (though he intends it to be). As we saw in Part I (pp. 57–8), Los has a Spectre and Los is a Spectre, the Spectre of Urthona. (Urthona is his eternal name.) Throughout the poem Los furiously builds Golgonooza, a structure that can open into great Eternity (J12–13), though in Ulro-Generation it helps foster ‘Religion hid in War’ (J75). In Generation, Los is ‘continually building & continually decaying’ (J53:19, 72) and can be co-opted by Newtonian Urizen (J58). In Beulah he can embody time (J85); in Ulro he must work within it. He labors for 6000 years (J75:7), working to reveal Eternity. Though he seeks to move forward from eternity to eternity, Los can slip backward into mechanistic causality (J56). Yet he does not age; he has retained his youth for 8500 years (J83:52). Jerusalem is both a young lover and an anguished mother, identified with age-bent Enion (J87i) and called a ‘scorn’d and contemn’d youthful girl’ (J83:7–8). She is the angelmorphic divine bride (J12, 14i, 20, 46, 72, 79, 86, 97) as well as an exhausted slave (J59–62, 85). Accursed, outcast, and starved, she wanders in Ulro, going mad in Cathedron’s mechanistic mills. She can repose in Beulah, commingling in the arms of her sister Vala (J19, 28i), and soar into the embrace of Jesus—into Eternity. In Eden/Eternity she emanates from Albion and descends from heaven, coinherent with Jesus, animating every living thing.

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Jesus can appear simultaneously as an infant and a man (J61–2). He breaks into Ulro and Generation, responding to Erin’s and Los’s pleas (J29, 35, 37i, 57, 60–2, 76i, 93–7). His incarnation, healing ministry, transfiguration, passion, resurrection, and apocalypse are eternally present; they exist in counterpoint to Albion’s nightmare (‘the Sleep of Ulro!’ (J4:1)). Albion is on the verge of apocalyptic awakening throughout the poem. Graves thunder (J34:42, 93:27), ready to yield their dead. The Divine Voice speaks in thunder (J3, 40:9, 57) as it does in Revelation (6.1 and 14.2). Divine vision breaks like a storm. Albion’s renewal parallels the raising of Lazarus, recurring allusively throughout the poem (J37i, 40, 50, 60, 62). The Transfiguration also pervades Jerusalem, beginning with the Greek epigram surmounting the moon in Plate 4 to Plate 98’s description of the fourfold body expanding in glorified translucence. When Selfhood is annihilated, life and death, like love and wrath, interact creatively with and in the Divine Body. Arts of death become arts of life again; Albion’s malevolent Starry Wheels can weave forgiveness with ‘wings of cherubim’ (J22:35).

SYNCHRONIC IMAGES Like characters and settings, images (wheels, looms, fibres) can morph into one another, behaving differently in different states of being. Blake often capitalizes words like ‘Wheels’, ‘Furnaces’, ‘Loom’, or ‘Body’. These capitalizations remind me of links on a web page; ‘Wheels’ or ‘Furnaces’ or ‘Fibres’ interconnect, forming patterns unconfined by a linear plot. For instance, ‘Starry Wheels’ recur throughout the poem, appearing fortyone times, mostly in the first two chapters; Ulro is their natural habitat (J12:51). When Albion rejects the Saviour’s song and banishes Jerusalem the Wheels appear, bending in fury and war to destroy humanity (J5). (Blake’s wheels have something in common with Boehme’s divisive wrath wheel and his notion of the fallen starry heaven.4) These Wheels are identified with Albion’s fallen sons as well as the fallen cosmos; the gleaming universe becomes a mechanistic zodiac revolving around Los’s furnaces and above Albion’s tomb (J5, 94). The mechanistic Wheels (J13, 15, 22, 65, 73) are also ‘the water-Wheels of Newton’ raging with the loom of Locke to enshroud the life of the mind (J15), and they conjoin with the fiery wheel of Natural Religion 4 In Boehme, falling into ‘the Starry’ means falling into a superficial outward realm (TL16.17) filled with lust and anger (TL18.21), which can be seen as a Man ‘in Sleep in his Mind’ (TI 10.19), like Albion asleep on his rock. In Boehme’s starry realm, the fiery nature is severed from love (TP 7.26) and the Mother and the four Elements cannot be found therein (TP 19.14). Arts and sciences emerge through the starry spirit, but these wonders could have been more angelically produced by Adam in paradise (TP 20.10).

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called Caiaphas (J77). Albion’s wheeling sons can also be a malignant Trinity, ‘Three Immense Wheels turning upon one another’, whose Natural Religion becomes ‘the mighty Polypus vegetating in darkness’ (J18:8–40), spreading a theological and psychological cancer of jealousy, fear, fury, doubt, and despair throughout the earth. Starry Wheels rip through Albion’s loins in war (J18:40–5) as Luvah does (J47) while Albion worships Vala (J23, 33–4, 64–8), turning the sexual chariot of the body (J98) into a chariot of death whose wheels grind Jerusalem to dust (J29). Scythed chariot wheels roll around the Druids’ howling victims (J63:11), as warriors and Druid daughters wheel in a dance of death (J24, 58, 63, 65–8, 80), circling the Druid stones which stretch from London to Great Tartary and America (J27, 32, 79, 82, 89, 92). These ‘Druid Temples & the Starry Wheels’ (J60:7) frown in ‘Twelve Ridges of Stone’ (J89:21) as a many-headed dragon spreads religion hid in war (J9, 44, 52, 75); humanity is enmeshed in Vala’s deadly veil—woven on Cathedron’s spinning wheels (J59) which are powered by the Satanic wheels encompassing Albion’s wheeling sons. Los’s labors in the seven furnaces of beryl are threatened by these aggressive Starry Wheels. Much of the action takes place in and around those furnaces5 whose flames illuminate many plates.6 The furnaces contain every story that has, can, or will ever be told—including the poem we are reading. As we read, we can be imaginatively like Jesus and Los, creative in a wave of flame. Unfortunately, fires can be as destructive as they are creative: in his furnaces (in Golgonooza) Los builds an ideal world, a culture of peace; but he also builds ‘Religion Hid in War’ and the horrors of industrialization. Like Los’s apocalyptic furnaces, Cathedron’s looms are both creative and destructive. When animated by love the looms bring forth the beautiful ‘Web of life’ (J83:73), a fabric of forgiveness (J22:35), but when blighted by Selfhood those looms manufacture a worldwide web of violence, greed, and fear (J22:34, 74:40–51). Throughout the poem, the Daughters (who work in these mills) spin and weave (J5, 31, 41, 56, 59–60, 66–7, 80, 82, 83, 90); they can produce both translucent fibres of love, animating the Divine Body (J4), and opaque ‘vegetative fibres’, shaping bodies incapable of emanation (J67:13). Vegetative fibres spread throughout the poem’s illuminations, undermining Albion and his children (J15i, 23i, 38i, 40i, 45i, 49i, 71i, 74i, 85i, 91i, 94i), Jerusalem (J23i, 31i, 37i), and the cosmos (J57i, 87i). Albion’s Tree of Mystery and Moral Law (also ‘a mighty Polypus’ (J66:48)) sends deadly fibres into human souls (J28, 43, 53, 66–7, 80, 82, 92, 98). Distressed Emanations become like worms, weaving bodies of death (J12:3, 80i, 82) and vegetative wombs. Like Cathedron looms, the womb can be a place of life and joy, or a source of destruction and despair. ‘In the Sleep of Ulro’ (when Jerusalem is banished) 5 6

See J5–12, 15–17, 32, 34–6, 38, 42, 44–7, 53, 55, 59–62, 66–7, 73, 78, 82–9, 92, 94, 96. See J5i, 6i, 7i, 22i, 26i, 35i, 36i, 46i, 50i, 51i, 54i, 58i, 59i, 62i, 66i, 72i, 81i, 93i, 95i, 96i, 99i.

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Vala’s oppressed daughters turn the womb into a deadly ‘Female Tabernacle’ (J88:19–20, 22, 27, 65–9, 89), a holy dark ark of sin and shame (J21:13, 22, 68:11–15, 75:10–20, 82:31–6), protected by Vala’s ‘vegetating’ veil (J24:61), a hymen of Moral Law obstructing Albion’s (and humanity’s) divine life. But in Eden/Eternity, the womb is the birthplace of the Lamb, with delightful palaces and gardens (J7), the centre of peace in Jerusalem (J86); in Beulah it is a tabernacle of mutual forgiveness (J30:34, 7:66). Thus the fabric of life need not be made of the opaque constrictions of Moral Law; it can be woven with the liberating forgiveness of ‘wings of cherubim’ (J22:35). Albion’s Starry Wheels can be creative, ‘wheel within wheel, in harmony and peace’ (J15:20). In ‘Forgiveness of Sin’ (J98) apocalyptic flames are fountains of living water (J96). As all who are thirsty can come and drink the water of life in Revelation 22.17,7 so in Jerusalem all living things can enter the Divine Body, distinctly identified, yet connected to all.

FROM ULRO TO EDEN Blake’s ‘great task’ involves moving us (with Albion) through Ulro’s unimaginative space so that the doors of perception may be cleansed and Eternity be embodied (J4:1–4, 5:16–26, 55:64, 91:19–22).8 The fate of the earth may depend upon changing the way we think about space, eternity, and the world around us. Before creating what he called ‘the Grandest Poem that this World Contains’, Blake wrote to his patron, Thomas Butts, that he intended ‘to speak to future generations’ (K825).9 We are among the ‘future generations’ to whom Blake speaks and moving beyond Ulro is of paramount importance. In Ulro space is empty and the universe composed of quantifiable objects;10 people, places, nature, and God are separate from one another. This spatial misconception has disastrous consequences that go beyond the world of Blake’s poem. Gregory Bateson11 observes: If you put God outside and . . . if you have the idea that you are created in his image you will logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against the

7

See also John 7.37. Also see MHH 12, 14 (K153, 154); FZ9:374 (K366); ‘Auguries of Innocence’ 1–4, 129–32 (K431, 434). 9 Blake does not name the poem in this letter (6 July 1803). I think it refers to Jerusalem, though he may have been creating Milton and Jerusalem simultaneously. 10 Carothers (1978) writes about Blake’s rejection of the empiricists’ notions of space and time. 11 Discussed in Part I, p. 139. 8

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things around you. And as you arrogate all mind to yourself you will see the world around you as mindless . . . If this is your estimate of your relation to nature and you have an advanced technology your likelihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell. (2000: 467–8)

Awakening from Ulro’s voidness involves seeing that God is ‘within and without’ (J12): in our souls, in Eternity, in the world all around us. Nature and culture, like the human and divine, interconnect. In differentiated unity we are one ecological (and divine) body. Honoring that interconnection can change the way we live and move and have our being. Of course change can be frightening; passing through the transformational gate of Los (J44:1–10) requires faith and imagination—as well as reason. Life in the Divine Body is not irrational. When Albion awakens, Urizen is not banished; he shines resplendent with a golden bow (J97). Imagination, reason, emotion, and primal needs coinhere. The Zoas, each with a different task, complement one another: Urizen plows, Luvah weaves, Tharmas tends flocks, Los continues to forge in his furnaces (J95). In Eden/Eternity the differentiations of Ulro, the productivity of Generation, and the bliss of Beulah synchronically contribute to life in the Divine Body.12 In Eden/Eternity even the most troublesome creatures (including the serpent) enter into the covenant of forgiveness, creating space, creating time. Every creature is uniquely gifted; each contributes to the building of Jerusalem.

IN CONCLUSION Different readers have different responses and approaches to Jerusalem’s multifaceted stories, but the most fruitful approaches encourage imaginative exploration. Jerusalem is not a cryptogram designed to be ‘decoded’, and those seeking to do so find the poem very confusing. It is not an object to be dissected, but an experience into which we enter. Approaching Jerusalem as visionary theatre lets us play with its characters, music, imagery, and settings; creatively, we can begin to comprehend Blake’s great vision. Giving voice to the poem clarifies how scenes shift and how characters move and change. Characters’ stories overlap in montage, presenting a story of Albion’s fall, many rescue attempts, amplified violence, and a glorious awakening. This story is interwoven with biblical and poetic allusions that Blake uses to challenge a theology of chosenness and to uphold a gospel of forgiveness.

12 ‘Bacon & Newton & Locke’ participate in fourfold vision, where the body awakens among ‘Flowers of Beulah’ and fibers (associated with Generation) grow infinitely translucent (J98).

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Jerusalem culminates in apocatastasis. Every living thing is ‘humaniz’d’, participating in the divinity of the forgiveness of sins. When characters ‘enter into’ one another they can empathize with one another. They can pity ‘the sinner who has gone astray’ (J31:35) while battling the soporifics of Selfhood (engendering greed, jealousy, and fear) by building new social and aesthetic structures.13 This transforms individual perception and social contexts. When we can get behind the eyes of even the most fallen characters (within the poem and outside it) we may enter into a way of being where ‘heaven, earth, and hell can live in harmony’ (J3). Judgment becomes forgiveness. All the world can be a visionary theatre, where all may awaken, entering the Divine Body.

13 Hannah Arendt observes that forgiveness is essentially creative: ‘the only reaction which does not merely re-act, but acts anew . . . what was done is forgiven for the sake of who did it’ (1958: 241–2).

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Index Note: in the index, WB refers to William Blake. Works of art and literature are listed under the names of their authors, if known. Headings for major characters are in bold type; page numbers in bold type denote main references. Aaron 232 Abomination of Desolation 85 Abraham/Abram 128 n. 13, 162, 173, 176 n. 17, 184 action 13, 122, 251 Adam 73, 100, 119, 180, 186, 233 Africa 133, 190 Agag 201 Ahania 11, 54–5 Aholah and Aholibah 70 Albion 62–3 antecedents 61–2 arrows 242 awakening 13, 31, 63, 97, 105, 114, 240–8, 249, 253 character 13 circumference 165 and crucifixion 118 curses 166, 168, 185 Daughters, see Daughters of Albion deaths 114, 168, 183, 253–4 despair 103 disembowelling 40, 60, 170 Emanation 48, 63, 92, 230, 241, 242, 244, 247 and England 8 fall 86, 173–6, 201, 216 fallen 47, 68, 69 family 47 fragmentation 45, 165, 172, 174 in illuminations 249 imperialism 92–3 and Jerusalem 62, 69, 85–7, 88, 93, 177 banishes her 85 curses her 87 embrace 91 and Jesus 94, 103–4, 114, 124, 151, 182, 242–3 rejects Jesus’s song 151–2 as land 122–3 and Los 13, 98, 118, 169, 177, 182, 183 and Luvah 55, 123, 169, 191 monologue 165, 175 petrified 177 reintegration 242–3

rescue attempts 87, 182, 183–4, 195 Selfhood 55–6, 58, 85, 88, 172, 178, 181–2, 204, 243 sickness 63, 114–15, 117, 158, 165, 183 sleep 27, 30, 62, 63, 84, 97, 118, 122, 160, 164, 165, 169, 172, 189, 190, 191, 221 Sons, see Sons of Albion Spectre 57, 172, 178 story 63 synchronisms 253–4 and time 47 and Transfiguration 118, 119 in Ulro 73–4, 86, 94, 104, 119, 124, 168, 181, 183, 188–9, 215 and Urizen 55 and Vala 62, 74, 75, 178–9, 194, 256 and Vala’s veil 61, 63, 166, 167–8 Albion’s Tree see Tree, Albion’s alchemy 25–8, 47, 111 n. 33, 158 transformation 52, 59 alienation 210 Alfheim 138 allegory 13, 209 Sublime Allegory 19, 40–2 Altizer, Thomas 11 Amalek 141, 232 Amalekites 188, 201 America 23, 37, 89, 93, 160, 184, 187, 192, 193, 199, 226, 228, 230–1 Jerusalem denounces 92 Revolution 29 n. 22, 37, 77, 89 Ammon 140, 232 Ammonites 212 Amonians 128 Anderson, James: Constitutions 52 Andreae, Johann Valentin 26 Chymical Wedding 26–7, 205 n. 22 Angel of the Tongue 209 Angelmorphic characters 45–9, 56, 88, 154 bodies 242 Enoch 241 Jerusalem 140, 141 Los 186 Los’s children 159

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Angelmorphic characters (cont.) Luvah 208 Mary 207 sex 174 n. 9 angels 46, 86, 164–5 biblical 46 WB converses with 48 cherubim 25, 87, 216, 231, 255, 257 Dürer’s 225 fallen 48, 51 n. 22, 117 in illuminations 86, 164–5 languages 184 angelic love 47 of Revelation 208 seraphim 235 Swedenborg’s 111 and Teresa of Avila 226 watchers 47, 186, 220, 224 n. 5 Anglican Church 10, 23, 128, 189 Ankarsjö, Magnus 14 Antamon 230 Antichrist 31, 235 Antigone 87 n. 47 antiquarians 126–9 Antiquaries, see Society of Antiquaries171 Antonielli, Arianna 117 n. 45 Apocalypse 9, 13, 19 creative 30, 119–20, 238 in Jerusalem 25, 119–21, 240 in Night Thoughts 99 in Book of Revelation 71, 119, 148, 152, 183, 211, 244–5 apocalyptic images 19, 42–3 apocalyptic transformations 42–3, 119–21, 234–40 apocatastasis (universal salvation) 15, 25, 54, 65, 118, 119, 156, 176, 194, 224, 231, 259 see also forgiveness Apollo 204, 249 Apollyon 159 apprentices 37 n. 43 Archaeologia 126, 127–8, 139, 158, 205 n. 21 engravings from, see illustrations Arendt, Hannah 259 n. 13 Aristotle 185 Armitage, Thomas 107–8, 109 arrows 103, 242 art 10, 70, 139, 224, 245 Artemis 249 Arthur 201, 210, 220 Ashmole, Elias 36, 125, 128, 171 Theatricum Chemicum Britannicum 26, 27, 198 n. 3 Astarte 134, 167, 220

astrology 192 see also Zodiac Athanasius 94 n. 1 Atlantis 62, 181 Atwood, Craig 109, 110 Aubrey, Brian 13, 72 Augustine, St 41 Austin, J.L. 146 Avebury 128–9, 131 Aztecs 187 Babel 132, 154, 237 Babylon 31, 52, 60, 70–1, 158, 164, 168, 170, 206, 221, 228, 234 Bacon, Francis 40, 132, 161, 162, 194, 212, 215, 240 Bacon, Wallace 24 n. 11, 139 ‘Bacon & Newton & Locke’ 65, 125, 126, 129, 132, 161, 178, 197, 201, 214, 245, 258 n. 12 Balaam 187 baptism 120, 237 bards 77, 145 British 24, 28 Druid 131 Los as 64 n. 54 of Oxford 190 Taliesin 171 n. 2 Barr, David 146 Bartolozzi, Francesco 38 Bashan 53, 179, 180, 193, 225 Basire, James 19 n. 2, 25, 29, 36, 48, 126, 127, 203 engravings by, see illustrations Bates, Adrianna 200, 247 Bateson, Gregory 139, 257–8 Bath 114, 116–17, 184, 189–90, 220 Bauckham, Richard 244 Beaurepaire, Pierre Yves 36 n. 41 Beatrice 225, 238 Bedlam 177 Beer, John 158 Behemoth 237 Belshazzar 231 Belus 166 n. 36 Bentley, G.E. viii, 16, 50 n. 20, 51, 118 n. 48, 148 Berkeley, George, Bishop 13, 200 Principles of Human Knowledge 182 n. 30 Three Dialogues 52 Bernini, Giovanni 226 Bethlehem 177 Beulah 6, 7, 44, 47, 86, 169, 173, 176, 190, 191–2, 252 daughters 52–3, 184, 191–2 in furnace 194–5

Index guardians 217–18, 219 and Los 58, 202–3 Night of 164, 165, 167 rivers 152 sleep 88 Spectre 58–9 and Vala 213 and veil 165–6, 167 Bhagavad-Gita 249 Bible 9, 97, 148 angels 46 God 102 harlotry 68 books endorsed by Swedenborg 191 Genesis 53, 115, 154, 166, 186, 193, 211, 219, 220, 230, 241 Boehme’s interpretation 30, 33 Leah and Rachel 213 Tree of Life 224 Exodus 153, 183, 204, 211, 232, 249 Leviticus 166 Numbers 22, 187, 192, 212, 219, 225 Deuteronomy 175, 180 n. 27, 192–3, 212, 219 Joshua 174, 180, 192, 225 Judges 179, 202, 225 I Samuel 201 II Samuel 213 Kings 180, 212 Chronicles 232 Nehemiah 192 Psalms 59, 174 n. 14, 192, 211, 221 Proverbs 68 Job 62, 168, 183, 193, 221 Song of Solomon 179 bride 228 bridegroom 93, 244 Isaiah 68, 170, 188, 202, 217, 221 vision of peace 70, 156, 231, 232 Jeremiah 140 n. 41, 162, 242 n. 41 Covenant of Jehovah 245–6 Lamentations 69 Ezekiel 69–70, 148, 161, 164, 174, 175, 183, 194, 235 city vision 136, 137–8, 159 temple 133 wheels 64, 153, 224 Zoas 64, 137, 178 see also Ezekiel (prophet) Daniel 64, 231 furnace 170, 180, 206 wheel 153 Hosea 69 Micah 173 n. 7, 217 Habakkuk 232 Malachi 156

293

Zechariah 159, 169, 202 Judith 205 Matthew 160, 164, 173, 186, 223, 224, 231, 233 Last Judgement 150 Mary and Joseph 207 Mark 163, 166, 184, 186, 231, 233 Luke 46, 97, 98, 115, 118, 149, 151 n. 7, 160, 173, 181, 201, 207, 223, 224, 247 John 151, 224, 238 n. 31 Jesus in 97–8, 118, 186, 205, 242 Martha 208 Acts 198, 223, 229 Romans 104, 105, 120, 173, 175, 182, 222 n. 62, 224 Corinthians 68, 104, 106, 124–5, 166, 200, 241 Galatians 106 Ephesians 105, 125, 156, 182, 194 Philippians 68, 246, 248 1 Thessalonians 156, 178 Hebrews 214 n. 43, 215, 228 James 170 1 Peter 139 1 John 31 n. 28, 170 n. 41, 227 divine love 243 forgiveness of sins 198 Jude 48 n. 8, 220, 241 n. 39 Revelation, see Revelation, Book of Bilhah 33, 162 Billings, William 101 Bladud 220 Blake, Catherine (née Wright; mother of WB) death 99 marriage 107–8 and Moravians 15, 29, 99, 107–8, 109, 110, 174 n. 14 Blake, Catherine Sophia (wife of WB) 8, 56, 78 n. 28, 99, 153 n. 13, 231, 242 family deaths 99 Blake, James 99, 108 Blake, Robert 80 n. 34, 99, 100, 130, 231 Blake, William apprenticeship 19 n. 2, 25, 122, 126–7 childlessness 153 n. 13 London homes 231 sedition trial 51, 53, 153, 154, 155, 195 paintings and illustrations ‘The Ancient Britons’ 77 ‘The Ancient of Days’ 35 ‘The Angel of the Revelation’ 208 of crucifixion 117–18 ‘Death of the Virgin’ 160 ‘Fall of Rosamund’ 76 ‘God Judging Adam’ 190 of Jerusalem 71–2, 82, 88

294

Index

Blake, William (cont.) of Jesus 99, 114–15, 117, 118 n. 48, 119 ‘Last Judgment’ 72 ‘Michael Binding Satan’ 185 n. 35 Nativity 114 for ‘Nativity’ ode 71, 212 to Night Thoughts 98–100, 153, 198 n. 6 for Paradise Lost 28, 103, 119 to Paradise Regained 201 in Pilgrim’s Progress 238 ‘River of the Water of Life’ 243 n. 42 of Transfiguration 118–19 ‘The Virgin and Child in Egypt’ 185 n. 35 ‘Virgin Hushing the Young John the Baptist’ 71 ‘Vision of the Last Judgment’ 240 n. 38 ‘Woman Clothed with the Sun’ 71 writings ‘Annotations to Bacon’ 161 ‘Annotations to Watson’ 53 n. 29, 180 n. 27 ‘Auguries of Innocence’ 223, 237, 252 Europe: A Prophecy 35,61, 160, 198 n. 6 Everlasting Gospel 106, 230 The Four Zoas 47, 54–5, 97, 134, 160, 208, 230, 233, 247 Gates of Paradise 28 Laocoön 203 ‘Mad Song’ 61 The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 29, 106, 111, 155, 219, 239 n. 34 ‘Song of Liberty’ 36 ‘Mental Traveller’ 47 Milton 28, 51, 97, 135–6, 198 n. 6, 204, 208, 238, 239 n. 35, 241 n. 40 ‘Jerusalem’ 82 ‘On the Virginity of the Virgin . . . ’ 80 ‘Song of Jerusalem’ 45, 102, 129, 139 see also Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion Songs of Experience 24, 101–2 ‘The Divine Image’ 101 ‘A Little Boy Lost’ 61 ‘Little Girl Lost’ 81 ‘Little Vagabond’ 39 ‘Poison Tree’ 242 ‘The Tyger’ 102, 120 Songs of Innocence ‘The Divine Image’ 101 ‘The Lamb’ 102, 109 n. 27, 120 ‘Spring’ 109 n. 27 ‘Vision of the Last Judgement’ 42–3 Visions of the Daughters of Albion 184, 224 n. 4 Blake Society 146, 147, 148 Bliss, Rebekah 174

Bloom, Harold 10, 214 n. 44 Blunt, Anthony 200 bodies 223–4 androgynous 244 angelic 242, 256 at Apocalypse 241–2, 245 of Christ 5, 105, 162 see also Divine Body paradise 186 ‘put off ’ 235 spiritual 33, 241–2 Boehme, Jacob 6, 7, 11, 13 n. 26, 19, 26, 28–35, 40, 46–7, 62, 108, 119, 164, 174n. 14, 181, 186, 187, 200, 239, 243, 244, 246, 251, 255 biography 29–31 Aurora, The 29–30, 34, 101, 172, 242, 247, 253 Discourse Between A Soul Hungry and Thirsty . . . 34, 153 Mysterium Magnum 33, 56, 152, 241–2, 247 Of the Election of Grace 33–4 Signatura Rerum 32, Sophia 72–5 The Three Principles of Divine Essence 30, 73, 233 The Threefold Life of Man 30–1, 241, 247 Treatise of the Four Complexions 34 Treatise on the Incarnation 32, 241 The Way to Christ 34, 35, 75 Bowen 53, 155 Boydell, John 118 n. 48 Bray, Thomas 23 Brereton 53 Brewster, Glen E. 177 n. 18 Bride of the Lamb/divine/heavenly 67, 68, 113, 140, 159, 160, 172, 226 brides in Solomon 228 in Swedenborg 112 Brightman 53 Britain 92, 128, 202, 215 Druids 29, 171 and England 53 and France 176, 209, 229 n. 12 and Israel 8, 24, 162, 163, 171 war 10, 51 as wilderness 165 Britannia 93, 240, 241, 242, 244 Brothers, Richard 35, 53, 77, 78 n. 28, 82, 159, 195, 236 Description of Jerusalem 77 n. 21, 136 Bruce, James 47, 128 n. 15 Bryant, Jacob 126, 166 n. 36 New System 127–8, 135, 136, 150, 165, 182 engraving from, see Figure 8

Index Buber, Martin 7, 102 n. 14, 139 Bullough, Edward 42 n. 66 Bunyan, John Pilgrim’s Progress 8, 238 Solomon’s Temple Spiritualised 125 Burdon, Christopher 146 Burgh, James: Art of Speaking 145 Burke, Edmund 99 Butlin, Martin 16 Butts, Thomas Blake Bible gallery 118 n. 48 WB’s letters to 6 n. 12, 40, 48 n. 11, 241 n. 40, 257 WB’s paintings for 49, 71, 98, 118, 151, 203, 208 Cabbalists (Kabbalists) and Kabbalah 62, 171, 172 n. 4, 200 Cabul 92, 226 Caesar: Commentaries 130 Caiaphas 240, 256 Calvinists 198, 218, 223 n. 2 Cambel 52–3, 215, 227, 229 Cambridge 152, 183, 227 Camden, William: Brittannia 130 Canaan 201, 210 heavenly 91, 136, 215 transformed 231–2 Canaanites 53–4, 184, 188, 210, 213, 230, 235 giants 219 slaughtered 225 Cardinal Points 137–8, 246 Carlyle, Thomas 59 n. 45, 204 Carothers, Yvonne 257 n. 10 Cathedral, St Paul’s 39, 41 n. 65 Cathedral Cities 11, 45, 63, 95, 114, 116–17, 165, 183–5, 186, 190, 203, 205, 211 drawn by Living Creatures 183 Cathedron, looms of 134–5, 137, 206, 256 Catholic Church 198, 217, 218 Celtic 171 n. 2 censorship 209 Chaotic Void 154 chastity 73, 163, 173, 177, 181, 209, 226, 241 Chemosh 51 Cherry, Martin 38 n. 49 children/little ones 28, 52, 70, 72 n 7, 172, 250 of Albion 62, 74, 103, 104, 120, 126, 132, 135, 165, 167, 178, 181, 186, 193 in Boehme 31, 34, 51 n. 22 destroyed 69, 179, 180 executed 174 industrial labour 156 n. 18 of Israel 92, 126

295

of Jerusalem 60, 63, 71, 85, 86, 89, 91, 106, 151, 153–4, 161 n. 30, 164–5, 181, 184, 188, 226 burnt alive 191 in heavenly commingling 136 and Los 157 and Jesus 99 of London 182 sacrificed 51 n. 22, 90, 126, 162, 200 starry 160 chosenness 21, 23, 53, 92, 106, 148, 163, 201, 210, 226, 258 Christ see Jesus Christology 13, 98 n. 9 Church/churches 33, 120, 132, 159, 160, 185, 220–1, 236 Anglican 10, 23, 128, 189 as dragon 235 Orthdox 110 see also Moravians; Religion circumcision 79, 105, 109, 175, 192, 202 circumference 15, 83, 137, 162, 189, 190, 216 of Albion 165 of Divine Body 214, 215 Clark, Steve 217 n. 51 Coban 164 Cock (Kox) 51, 53, 155, 215 coinherence 4, 100, 32, 42, 44–5, 46, 49, 53, 59, 72, 75, 94, 96, 107, 112, 115–16, 124, 152, 153, 162, 171, 175, 178, 184, 191, 193, 195, 197, 214, 222, 225, 232, 236, 238, 244, 246, 248, 254, 258 coinherent contraries 101–4 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 20 n. 4, 76 n. 16, 140 n. 42 Kubla Khan 140 Colley, Linda 229 n. 12 Comenius, Jan 108 commingling 27, 30, 32, 75, 76, 81, 83, 84, 91, 111, 113, ‘‘9, 161, 166, 173–4, 176, 179, 185, 202, 204, 207, 214 n. 44, 215–16, 226, 245, 252, 254 Jerusalem 86, 92, 189 concave 135, 136, 201 conjugial love 47, 73 n. 12, 111 Connolly, Tristanne 13, 80 n. 35, 182 n. 30, 243–4 contraction 4, 119, 179–80, 186, 193, 253 of Hyle 227 Contraries 101–4, 150 Coolidge, J.S. 124, 140 n. 41 Copernicus 124 Cordelia 61–2, 87, 167 Cordella 62, 87, 167, 215 cosmology 27, 35, 174, 231–2, 237

296

Index

cosmos 124, 153, 161–2, 188, 204, 239 Covering Cherub 235, 243 Cowper, William 58, 157 Crawfurd, Oswald 65 n. 57 Crucifixion 117–19, 222, 234 Cumberland, George 51, 76–7 Cunningham, Allan 8 Cush 154 daemonic characters 45–6 see also Angelomorphic characters Dalton, John 211 n. 34 Damon, S. Foster 9, 59, 64, 72 n. 9, 113, 119, 135, 158, 208 Dan 212 dance 101 of daughters 24, 204, 227 of death 256 divine 246 Dante 42, 46, 225, 238 Darwin, Erasmus: Botanic Garden 138 Daughters of Albion 45, 50, 52–4, 122, 131, 157, 160, 163, 179, 210–11, 228, 230, 233, 236, 254 dance 24, 204, 227 lamentations 231 songs 24 whipped 167 see also Beulah/daughters; Vala’s daughters David, King 82, 173, 220, 236 Davies, Edward 171 Mythology 53 Davies, J.G. 9–10, 95, 115 n. 42 Davies, Keri 27, 49 n. 13, 107, 174 n. 11 de Tracy, Destutt 214 dead, Spectres of 57 death Eternal 120, 151, 181, 183, 252 sleep of 33, 114, 119, 217 Dee, John 184, 192 n. 55 Deism, see Druids and Deism DeLuca, Vincent 12 Demidoff, Paul 127 Dewhurst, Kenneth 158 n. 23 Diana 131 Dinah 33, 54, 220, 240 Divine Body 4–5, 7, 32, 44, 48, 58, 66, 85, 95, 96, 98, 105, 107, 110, 116, 120, 163, 168, 169, 172, 182, 193, 202, 203, 206–7, 214, 258 entering 243, 244, 246, 247, 248, 257 gender 243–4 Divine Bosom 85, 153 Divine Family 47, 56, 115–16, 188, 244 and Albion 182, 183–4

Divine Vision (Jesus) 65, 91, 95, 105, 123, 155, 160, 164, 168, 172, 174, 176, 181, 185–6, 201, 203, 204, 206, 244 shrinks 211 Divine Wisdom, see Mirror of Divine Wisdom; Sophia Donne, John 64 Dortort, Fred 14, 246 Doskow, Minna 13, 117 n. 44, 176, 183, 190, 194, 208, 210 Dragon Temples 127, 130 dragon/s 25, 28, 68, 71, 75, 152 n. 11, 160, 256 Covering Cherub 235, 243 devours Jerusalem 93, 125, 126 -harlot 15, 60, 204 hermaphrodite 123, 197, 234–5 of Revelation 60, 82, 178, 204 seven-headed 15, 22, 71, 91, 221, 229 n. 14 Druid Dragon 130, 163, 168 Druid Spectre 57, 60 Druids and Deism 27, 39, 40, 53, 122, 164, 167, 179, 180, 182, 184, 188, 196, 197–9, 201, 208, 219, 231, 246 address to 197 altars 174, 187 at Apolcalypse 256 goddess 210, 213, 215 Hand 51 and Jews 171, 227 polypus 212 sleep 172 stones 139 structures 125–33 Temples 125, 126, 130, 163, 177, 178, 206, 249, 256 Trinity 40, 125, 129, 132, 169, 178, 182, 197, 212 n. 36, 214 Wicker Man 126, 130, 188 Dunn, James 120 Dürer, Albrecht 49 Melancolia 225 Eagle 137, 138, 178, 225, 240 Easson, Roger 12 ‘Easter’ hymn 101 ecology 3, 45, 152, 170, 213, 258 of mind 139, 230 Edda/s 127, 138 Eden 15, 134, 160, 162, 166, 167, 193, 249 Sanctuary 214 sons 24 see also Canaan/heavenly Eden/Eternity 1, 4–5, 6, 7, 44, 98, 166, 187, 215 entered 251–3, 257, 258 see also Fourfold Vision

Index Edinburgh 182 Edwards, Jonathan 23 Efimovitch, Sergei 190 Egypt and Egyptians 36, 37, 64, 70, 92, 93, 135, 141, 180, 185 n. 36, 200, 201 Elder Edda 59, 62 Elias 46 Elijah 242 ellipsis 150 Ellis, Edwin 9 Elohim 115, 189, 207, 219 Emanation/s 5–6, 32, 45–6, 52–3, 54–6, 59, 68, 69, 90, 93, 153, 156, 161, 165, 167, 193, 199, 219, 230, 231, 234, 244 Albion’s 48, 63, 92, 230, 241, 242, 244, 247 in flight 175–6 embrace 7, 32, 33, 107, 109 of Albion 155, 178, 241 and Emanation 63, 69 and Jerusalem 75, 91 Boehme 29 Druid 215 of Emanations 63, 234, 243 of Erin 158 forbidden 74, 220 forgiving 83 human-divine 79, 214, 218 of Jerusalem 64, 69, 79, 83, 88, 91, 102, 106, 247 and Albion 75, 91 and Jesus 14, 67, 70, 74, 79, 85, 107, 111, 112, 139, 170, 226, 254 and Vala 166 of Jesus 71, 109, 110, 239 of Los 156, 187 of Mary 90, 113 Moravian 111, 176 Southcott 79 Spectre 178 in Ulro 56 see also commingling empiricism 65, 90, 91, 151 n. 9, 159, 161, 176, 242 England 59, 60, 61, 129, 178, 181, 201 and Albion 8, 241 and Britain/Britannia 53, 93, 240, 241, 242 and France 55 English language 184 Enion 54–5, 233, 254 Enitharmon 47, 56, 58, 66, 154, 163, 185, 230, 231, 233–4, 238, 239, 248 Enoch 48, 186, 241 Book of Enoch 47–8, 79, 219, 220, 241 n. 39 Watchers 47, 186, 220, 224 n. 5 enthusiasm 51, 157

297

Eon 165, 183 Ephrata 174 Erdman, David 10, 14, 16 n. 33, 41, 50, 56, 58, 64, 80, 158, 160, 176, 187, 189, 190, 194, 199, 201, 216, 225, 248 Erin 33, 54, 114, 211, 220, 240 helps Jerusalem 71, 74, 88, 89–90, 230 redemptive 191–5 spaces 54, 157, 158–9, 192 erotic bliss/joy 6, 13, 32, 48, 69, 73–4, 75, 107, 112, 135, 167, 176, 181, 239 n. 32 orgasm 69, 214 erotic energy 110, 181, 210, 252 erotic spirituality 78–81, 107–12 Moravians 107–11 Swedenborg 111–12 Esau 155 Essick, Robert 1, 101, 102, 145 Esterhammer, Angela 12, 146 Estrild 215 Eternal Death 120, 151, 181, 183, 252 Eternals 181, 182, 189, 190, 200, 253 chorus 45 and Divine Family 117 expansion and contraction 4–5, 19, 74 and Los 181 in Mundane Shell 201–2 names 184 the Twenty Four 165, 186–7 see also Cathedral Cities Eternity 3, 147, 153, 158, 160, 174, 187, 228, 230, 251–3, 257 Jerusalem in 251 visions of 193 see also Eden/Eternity Euphrates 92, 172, 226, 231 Evans, Joan 128 n. 15 Evdokimov, Paul 43 Eve 71, 82, 95, 100, 180, 194, 236 Examiner, The 50, 156 n. 19, 236, 240 n. 36 Exeter 76, 184, 212 exorcism 114 expansion 4–5, 186, 245, 253 at Apocalypse 245 Eyes of God, Seven 115, 117, 202 Ezekiel (prophet) 64, 69–70 chariot vision 10 family 47, 173, 207 Divine see Divine Family feuds 219–20 marriage within 47 Fates 206 Felpham, Sussex 64, 78, 80 n. 34 Female Tabernacle 214, 233–4, 257 see also vulva

298 Female Will 56, 65, 179, 203 Fénélon, Bishop 218 Ferber, Michael 25 n. 12 fibres 162, 233, 256 of dominion 234 of love 5, 54, 87, 105, 119, 162, 171, 179, 183, 198, 256 vegetative 256 Fiddes, Paul S. 177 n. 19, 222 n. 62, 246 n. 48 Firth, Katharine 22 Fischer, Kevin 13 Flaxman, John 29, 76–7, 78, 111–12, 151, 217 n. 53 Hesiod 64 n. 55, 76, 221 n. 61 Flaxmer, Sarah 219 n. 56 Fletcher, Angus 46 Fletcher-Louis, Crispin 46 Flowers 223, 245, 252 see also Lily Foley, Thomas 229 n. 14 forgiveness 1, 10, 15, 41, 84, 90, 93, 99, 148, 151, 171, 176, 243, 198, 224, 227, 259 Albion rejects 154, 204 at Apocalypse 245–6, 248 continual 5, 94–5, 103, 150 of Jerusalem 69 Jesus 94–7, 113–14, 119–20, 121, 150 Covenant 97, 119–20, 121, 245–6 by Joseph 207 see also apocastasis fountains 129 Boehme, spirits 30 intellectual 198 of living water 71, 119, 243, 257 four-and-twenty Elders 165 Fourfold Vision 6, 7, 33, 69, 124, 138, 242, 246–7, 251, 252 expansion 245 see also Eden/Eternity Fourfold Wonder 155 France 226 and Britain 176, 209, 229 n. 12 Emanations 86 Goddess of Reason 59, 131, 196, 204 imperialism 196 Luvah as 44, 122, 176, 209 Revolution 55, 77, 99 Shiloh as 193, 228 see also Napoleonic wars; Paris Franklin, Benjamin 37 n. 43, 128 n. 15, 198 n. 4 Frea 130 free love 70, 106, 113, 185, 227 see also commingling

Index Freemasons and Freemasonry 28, 35–40, 51, 64, 125, 126, 131–3, 159, 176, 177, 198, 205 Constitutions (Anderson) 52 Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry (Mackey) 137 entertainments 19, 38–9 ‘Origin of Freemasonry’ 39, 51, 126, 131–2 ‘Passing the Veils’ 60 ritual and symbols 40 directional symbolism 137 hand symbolism 52 initiation ritual 180 Tavern and Hall 19 n. 2, 37, 77 see also Jachin and Boaz Freud, Sigmund 13 Friends to Freedom of the Press 37 Friga 210 n. 30, 230 Frosch, Thomas 13, 239 n. 34 Frye, Northrop 9, 10, 11, 29, 41, 55, 58, 59, 62, 136 Anatomy of Criticism . . . 42 Fuller, David 13, 72 n. 8 furnaces 30, 57, 103, 122, 140, 162, 177, 190, 192, 229, 232, 234 of affliction 63, 155, 157, 219, 243 become animal parts 200 apocalyptic 185, 192, 256 in Daniel 170, 180, 206 become living water 63, 243 as Mundane Shell 187 opened 185 Thames flows through 182 Fuseli, Henry 118 n. 48, 149 Gad 212 Galileo 224 Garden, James 139 Garrido, Luis and Carol 185 n. 35 gates 205 gems 74, 140, 205, 232 chrysolite 157 sapphire 210 Generation 6, 7, 44, 85–6, 109, 134, 155, 200, 253 World of 204, 252 genius 236 Geoffrey of Monmouth 53, 87, 179 n. 23 Histories 180, 184, 194 Gibbon, Edward 198, 199, 210 Gigante, Denise 6 n. 11, 239 n. 33 Gilbert, Francis 147, 248 Gilbert, Robert 35, 36 Gilchrist, Alexander 9, 77 n. 20 Life of William Blake 8 Gnostics 189

Index Godwin, William 218 Goethe: Faust 6 n. 10 Gog-Magog 194 Goldsmith, Oliver 203 Golgonooza 123, 124, 134–8, 225, 231, 252, 254 building of 122, 159–60, 216–17, 219 gates 162–3, 216–17, 253 guardians 181 images 26, 30, 125 Golgotha 159 Görlitz, Germany 29, 30, 34 Gothic 39, 177 n. 19 Gough, Richard: Sepulchral Monuments 151 Grant, John E. 99 Gray, Thomas 126, 130 Progress of Poesy 242 Great Queen Street 37, 133, 231 Grecia 225 Greece 124, 125, 212 Green, Joseph 39 n. 53 Gregory of Nyssa 15 Guion, Jeanne-Marie 218 A Short and Easy Method of Prayer 218 Gwendolen 52–3, 54, 167, 209, 210 n. 31, 215, 227–9 dancing 24 contracts Hyle 53, 229 and Reuben 54, 227 Hagar 106, 230 Hagstrum, Jean vii, ix, 10–11, 14, 45 n. 2, 81 n. 36, 100 n. 13, 102, 113, 148, 149, 195–6 Hamill, John 35, 36 Hand 40, 46, 50–2, 86, 88, 120, 156, 161, 163, 17, 179, 181, 186, 188, 215, 225, 226, 227, 229, 231 and Duke of Richmond 51–2, 195 hermaphroditic 214 and Hunts 50 in illuminations 50, 195 and Jerusalem 170 as polypus 164 whips Albion’s daughters 167 hand symbolism 52 Handel, George Frederick 24, 53 Messiah 12, 24–5, 241 Harlequin Freemason 38 harlots 68–71, 106–7, 207–8 Jerusalem as 67, 68, 69, 72, 90, 106–7, 207 and Southcott 79 Vala as 32, 59 see also Magdalene; whore Hartley, David 35 n. 33 Hartlib, Samuel 108 n. 21

299

Havilah 166, 173, 185 Haycock, David Boyd 128 n. 16, 129 Hayley, William 23, 52, 80 healing 114–15 heaven 20, 136, 138, 224, 227, 245, 246, 247–8 Boehme 25, 35, 46, 86, 251, 255 heavenly Canaan 91, 136, 215 and earth 2, 8, 31, 33, 77, 96, 99, 141, 150, 171, 178, 248, 250, 259 forged by Los 65, 220 gates 183, 229 and hell 8, 31, 33, 96, 99, 100, 141, 150, 187, 237, 250, 252, 259 human-centred 241 internal 41 n. 64, 139, 215 in Isaiah 70 Jerusalem’s descent from 90, 93, 139–40, 141 marriage in 47 in Revelation 64 Swedenborg’s 183 see also angels; Paradise Heath, Tim viii, 147 Hebrew heroes 219 Hebrew language 145, 171 n. 2 Hebrew Temple 176 hell 123, 151, 163, 195, 224 gates 183 Hades 152 harrowing 96, 141, 221 and heaven, see under heaven Jerusalem in 225 see also Satan; Ulro henopoeia 49 Hephaistos 64 Heppner, Christopher 72 n. 7 Herbert, George ‘Church Floore’ 159 Temple 125 Herbert of Cherbury, Lord 197 n. 1 hermaphrodite 26, 178–9, 204, 213, 235 dragon 123, 197, 234–5 giants 220 Spectre 209–10, 213 Vala as 209–10, 211 Hermaphroditic World 205 Hervey, James 218 Meditations Among the Tombs 218 Heshbon 225, 228 Hesiod: Theogony 64, 151 Hilton, Nelson 28, 249 Hinduism 60, 190 Hindu Pantheon 200 Hinnom 162, 200, 212 Hirst, Desirée 11 Hogarth, William 38

300

Index

Hoglah 212 Holinshed, Raphael: Chronicles 62 Holofernes 205 Holy Ghost 110 Homer Iliad 145 Odyssey 145 homosexuality 244 lesbians 174 Hume, David 198 Hunt, John 51, 156 Hunt, Leigh 51, 156 Hunt, Robert 48, 50, 156, 236, 240 n. 36 Hutton, Ronald 53, 128 n. 13 Hyle 50, 52, 86, 161, 164, 186, 215, 216, 227 and Gwendolen 53, 228, 229 whips Albion’s daughters 167 Hyperion 242 ideology 197 n. 2, 211, 213, 214–15, 219, 238 Ignatius 43 imagination 1, 3, 5, 40, 95, 168, 198, 215, 223, 245 earthly 32 imperialism 53, 86, 91 n. 54, 92–3, 129, 161, 163, 178, 179, 196 inclusivity 10, 68, 69–70, 106, 133, 169, 199, 203–4 industrial revolution 135 Iraq/Mesopotamia 92, 154 Ireland 54, 192, 215 Isaac 117 n. 45, 155 Isaiah 29, 68, 70, 84, 157, 170, 188, 217, 231, 232 Ishmael 230 Isis 200 Israel 22, 42, 68–9, 173, 192, 232 and Britain 8, 24, 53, 65, 128, 162, 163, 171 children of 92, 126 Druid 53, 180 in Jerusalem 141 shredded 235 tabernacle of 206 Israelites 9, 53, 59, 60, 162, 182, 187–8, 192–3, 195, 212–13, 214, 235 dance 227 harlot daughters 70 sons of Albion 220 see also Jews Jachin and Boaz 36, 40, 52, 56, 180 Jacob 213 Jael 179 jealousy 69, 101–2, 166, 182, 200, 213, 216, 233, 234, 241

Jehovah 113, 115, 150, 193, 207 covenant of 207, 245–6 Jephthah 225 Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion and Book of Revelation 20–3 characters 4, 44, 49–54, 122–3 angelmorphic 45–9 choruses 9, 11 creation of 2, 150 critical responses 8–15, 41, 48 date 50, 51 and Freemasonry 35–40 frontispiece 95–6, 149, 199 illuminations 12, 15, 98 imagery 19, 28, 35, 119 interpreting 1–5, 15, 258–9 landscape 123 language 146 minute particulars 4, 9, 10, 15 music 23–5 narrator (Blake) 64, 105, 151, 161, 182, 184, 185, 191, 207, 220, 223, 235 performance 13, 147 plot 4, 145 reading 2–3, 145–8, 250, 251 settings 4, 122–4 structure 9, 13, 21, 41, 145 texts 15–16 as visionary theatre 2–3, 4, 20–3 Jerusalem (city) 39, 53, 120, 122–3, 138–41, 246 Building 40, 124–5, 139 as harlot 68–9 Masonic 39 Jerusalem (heroine) 67–91, 191 and Albion 62, 69, 85–7, 88, 93, 177 banishes her 85 curses her 87 embrace 91 addresses America 92 at Apocalypse 244, 247, 248 banishment 33, 85–7, 88, 165 in Beulah 86, 166 as Bride of the Lamb 67–8, 86, 159, 160 character and context 13–14, 67–77 children of, see under children Christ-like 67–8 commingling 86, 92, 189 descent from heaven 93, 139–40, 141 devoured by dragon 91, 93, 126, 141, 234–5 embrace 64, 69, 79, 83, 88, 91, 102, 106, 247 and Albion 75, 91 and Jesus 14, 67, 70, 74, 79, 85, 107, 111, 112, 139, 170, 226, 254 and Vala 166

Index and England 88, 89 Erin helps 71, 74, 88, 89–90, 230 and Eternity 252–3 fragmented 90 as harlot 67, 68–9, 72, 90, 106–7, 207 in hell 91 in illuminations 71–2, 83, 84, 86, 89, 93, 102, 149, 168, 175 imagery 11, 67 and Jesus 14, 67–8, 74, 79, 90, 107, 109–10, 112, 254 lamentation 91, 225 as Liberty 13, 82, 88 in London 177 love 32, 83, 85, 112 and Mary 90, 113–14 Maternal anguish 54, 85, 86, 106, 153, 154, 254 in mills 14, 90–1, 206, 208 monologue 91–2 performed 147 rises 93 shamed 69 sleep 83, 87, 88, 89, 91, 149, 168, 192, 195 Song 25, 86, 225, 247, 248 and Sophia 72–5 and Southcott 76 story 84–5 synchronisms 254 translucent 232 travels 13–14, 87–8 triple 140–1, 232, 253 in Ulro 86, 251 and Vala 59–60, 74, 84–5, 86–7, 153–4, 164–5, 175, 177 Vala seeks to destroy 226–7 Vala as Shadow of 30, 66, 68–9, 74, 84–6, 88–9, 92, 101, 106, 131, 134, 155, 158, 163, 167, 175, 177, 195, 226, 254 Vala undermines 167, 175, 177, 208 Vala veils and tramples 88–9 in wilderness 71, 123, 165 wings 74–5, 86, 93, 134, 140–1, 149, 160, 168, 232, 235 as Woman Clothed with the Sun 71–2 Jerusalem’s Aria 3 n. 5 Jesus/Christ 9, 94–5, 141 and Albion 94, 103–4, 124, 151, 182, 242–3 apocalypse 119–21 birth 113–14, 206, 208 body 5, 105, 162 see also Divine Body and Bride 172 brides 110 and contraries 101–4

301

Covenant of Forgiveness 97, 119–20, 121 crucifixion 117–19, 222, 234 death 166, 243 dictates the poem 96 embrace 71, 109, 110, 239 and Jerusalem, see below erotic spirituality 107–12 and Eternity 252–3 first appearances 95–8 Friend of Sinners 96, 150, 201, 228 healing 114–15 in illuminations 98, 100, 103, 114–15, 117–18, 119 and Jerusalem 67–8, 90, 109–10, 206–7, 254 their embrace 14, 67, 70, 74, 79, 85, 107, 111, 112, 139, 170, 226, 254 love 181 in Moravian Church 107–11 nature and function 94–5 painted by WB 98–9, 100, 103, 119 putting on 120 redemption 224 resurrected 180 and St Paul 104–7 side-wound 109 singing 21, 23–4, 44, 151–2, 161, 172, 198, 214, 255 Swedenbeorg 111–13 synchronisms 255 Transfiguration 46–7, 96–7, 150, 151 and Trinity 115–17 visualizing 98–101 see also Divine Body; Lamb of God; Saviour Jews 53, 127, 171–3 see also Israelites Jezebel 65 Joachim of Fiore 220 n. 57, 221 n. 59 Job 62 John, St, the Baptist 39 John, St, the Divine 39, 64, 140, 145, 224, 225, 230 see also Revelation, Book of Johnson, Joseph 77, 200, 218 Jones, Inigo 220 n. 58 Jones, William 60 Jordan, River 92, 225 Joseph (husband of Mary) 90, 113, 207 Joseph (son of Jacob) 212 Judea 225 Jung, Carl 6 Kabbalists (Cabbalists) and Kabbalah 62, 171, 172 n. 4, 200 Kadmon, Adam 62, 171–2 Kali 200

302

Index

Kant, Immanuel 168 n. 38 Kaplan, Marc 13 Kennett, Frances 151 n. 10 Keynes, Geoffrey 8, 14, 16, 64 Khunrath, Heinrich: Ampitheatricum Sapientiae Aeternae 26 King, William 210 n. 30 Kosciusko, Tadeusz 77 Kotope 155, 212, 215 Kovacs, Judith 46 Kox (Cock) 51, 53, 155, 215 Lamb of God/Divine 93, 120, 167, 206, 229, 230, 234 Bride of 67, 68, 86, 113, 140, 159, 160, 172, 226 commingling 92 healer 114 in Revelation 119, 245 Sacrifice 164 slain 169, 187 ‘Song of the Lamb’ 206 Lambeth 64, 159, 184 Lane, Belden 26 n. 13 language 11, 65, 146, 149 languages angelic 184 English 184 Hebrew 145, 171 n. 2 see also orality Last Judgment 150, 343 Law 104–5, 120, 183 see also Moral Law; Natural Law Law, William 29, 203 Lazarus 114–15, 116, 162, 181–2, 184, 194, 207, 255 Lead, Jane 15 Leah 213, 239 Lebanon 141 Lennox, Charles, see Richmond, Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of lesbians 174 Lesnick, Henry 225 Leutha 177, 231 Levant 53, 133, 172, 180 Levi 54 Leviathan 237 Liberty 13, 31, 69, 93, 152, 167, 170, 176, 177, 187, 200 Jerusalem as 13, 82, 88 Libya 133 Lily 30, 173 of Havilah 74, 166, 185 Lincoln, Andrew 105 n. 17, 217 n. 51 Linnell, John 14

Locke, John 13, 40, 126, 132 n. 31, 158, 161, 162, 194, 197, 224, 240 loom 161, 255 Essay Concerning Human Understanding 214–15 see also ‘Bacon & Newton & Locke’ London 39, 87, 123, 159, 182, 203 WB’s homes in 231 golden 172 as Golgotha 129 Great Fire 39 as Hinnom 162 Lambeth 64, 159, 184 Los’s journey through 176–7 Oxford Street 8, 48, 78 n. 27 and Reuben 54 theatre 203 Tyburn 125, 174, 208 under black veil 184 London Corresponding Society 37 London Stone 126, 155, 186, 241 London University Magazine 8 looking glass of Enitharmon 56, 209, 217 see also Mirror of Divine Wisdom; mirrors looms 255 of Cathedron 122, 123, 134–5, 137, 206, 230, 256 of Enitharmon 56, 209, 217, 238 of Fatal Sisters 130 golden 203 Golgonooza’s 54, 153 Locke’s 161, 255 of Love 202 Luvah’s 242 Vala’s 227 Los 63–6 at Apocalypse 242, 248–9 builds temple 204–5 character 13, 46, 62, 159 contraction 165, 178–9 despair 225 Divine Vision 185–6, 206, 208 in Divisions of Reuben 179–81 and Emanation 200 and Enitharmon 56, 209, 233–4 and the Eternals 181–5 forging 122–3, 160 gate of 183, 184, 185, 258 and Golgonooza 124, 134, 159–60, 216–19 hall 163 hammer 15, 30 n. 25, 40, 63, 89, 93, 155, 181, 225, 234, 242 in illuminations 154, 175 vision of Jerusalem 66, 93, 140

Index and Jesus 85, 116, 119, 120, 176, 222, 243 journey through London 176–7 language 184 monologue 236 in performance 147 and polypus 213 rage and destruction 65, 179, 187, 218, 219–20, 236–8 attempts rescue of Albion 56, 185–90 and Selfhood 66 song 24, 140–1, 231, 232 Sons 11, 159, 163, 215, 216, 239–40 and Spectre 58–9, 154–7, 175, 182, 233, 234, 236–7 becomes 242, 254 compels to work 66, 163 in illumination 154 smites 25, 40, 59, 63 tears from Los’s back 154, 178 on his watch 229–32 as sun-god 128 synchronisms 254 task 13, 40, 56 Mystery Tree enters 65, 200, 202 love 5, 30, 120, 152, 159, 161 Agape 79 conjugial 47, 73 n. 12, 111 divine 243 Eros 79 fibres of 5, 54, 87, 105, 119, 162, 171, 179, 183, 198, 256 free (commingling) 70, 106, 113, 185, 227 of Jesus 181 self-enclosed 213–14 time of 70, 86, 87, 91, 166, 167, 174, 175, 225–6, 248 see also erotic bliss Lowth, Robert 145, 150 n. 5 Luban 134–5 Lucifer 117, 152 see also Satan Luna 47 Luria, Isaac 172 Luvah 9 n. 18, 11, 44, 55–6,57, 104, 122–3, 165, 167, 168, 175, 204, 208, 221, 242 and Albion 169 tears from Albion’s loins 55, 123, 191 cut up 179 as France 44, 122, 176, 209 in furnace 155, 198, 253 in London 177 synchronisms 254 torments 169, 206, 210 trial 55, 209, 210, 211 and Vala 47, 226 and Vala’s daughters 210

303

McClenahan 54 n. 32, 156 n. 18 MacCulloch, Diarmaid 124 Mackey, Albert: Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry 137 Madden, Deborah 77 n. 21, 82 n. 39 Madoc, Prince 231 Magdalene (harlot) 72, 90 Maier, Michael 27, 40 Atalanta Fugiens 26, 27–8, 47, 135 n. 36 Maillard, Mlle. 59 n. 45 Malah 212 Malden 184 Malkin, Benjamin Heath 20, 119 Mallet, Paul Henri 126 Northern Antiquities 130, 138 Manasseh 212 Mantegna, Andrea 96 marriage divine 244 in Eternity 47 within family 47 Israel and God 69 of Jerusalem 244 in Swedenborg 73 n. 12, 112 in Ulro 177, 244 see also brides Marsh, Edward 190 n. 48 Martha 194, 207, 208 Marx, Karl 190, 210 Mary (mother of Jesus) 90, 95, 112, 113–14, 206, 207–8 and Jerusalem 113, 207–8 and Joseph 113, 207 painted by WB 114 song 113, 207 Mary (sister of Lazarus) 194, 207, 208 Mary Magdalene 200, 208 Magdalene (harlot) 72, 90 Masonic Encyclopaedia 52 Masonic Lodges 36–40, 51, 52, 198 n. 4 masques 19 n. 1 Maternal Anguish 54, 85, 86, 106, 153, 154, 254 Maternal Humanity 88, 236 Maternal Love 89, 153, 191, 236 Mather, Cotton 23 Mede, Joseph 12, 19, 22–3, 49, 53 Mee, Jon 24 n. 11, 35 n. 33, 50, 51, 76, 236 Mehetabel 53, 215 Mellor, Anne 13 Memling, Hans 22 Merlin 179, 181, 184, 220 Mesopotamia/Iraq 124, 207 Methodist Church 108, 198, 218 Michael, Jennifer Davis 12 n. 24 Michelangelo 224

304

Index

Middle East 232 see also Israel; Levant Midian 187–8 Milcah 212 Milligan, Julie 147 mills 24, 54, 135, 162, 196, 198, 208, 254, 256 Satanic 52, 74, 75, 206 Albion in 183 Jerusalem in 14, 90–1 Milner, John 217 Milton, John 125, 129, 171, 183 Areopagitica 130, 198 n. 3, 245 Comus 19 n. 1, 87 History of Britain 53, 62, 130 ‘Nativity Ode’ 71, 212 ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’ 114 n. 38 Paradise Lost 51 n. 22, 97, 98, 103, 117, 157,/ 164, 168, 174 n. 9, 186, 214 n. 44, 238 WB’s illustrations 28, 103, 119, 242 Paradise Regained 11 WB’s illustrations 201 Reason of Church Government 21–2 Samson Agonistes 21, 167 mines 156 n. 18 Minute Particulars 3, 10, 12, 43, 176, 177, 187, 197, 202, 225, 236, 237 Miriam 128, 204 Mirror of Divine Wisdom 13, 32, 56, 65, 72, 149 mirror writing 57, 64–5, 185, 227 mirrors 74 see also looking glass Mitchell, W.J.T. 1, 12, 208, 225 Mizraim 132 Moab 141, 187–8, 228, 232 Moabites 187, 188, 207, 230 Molech 51, 212 Monahan, John 199–200, 247 Monroe, James 201 n. 10 Moor, Edward: Hindu Pantheon 200 Moral Law 54, 104–5, 106, 119, 121, 125, 131, 166, 167, 168, 173, 174, 176, 177, 182, 183, 185, 187, 194, 199, 206, 213, 233–4, 256–7 Moral Tree, see Tree, Albion’s Moral Virtue 52, 87, 104, 120, 152, 168, 183, 197 veil rent 119 Moravians 15, 29, 107–11, 174 n. 14 Singstudes 108 More, Henry 23, 49, 150 n. 5, 212 n. 40, 240 n. 37 ‘Exposito Mercave’ 172 n. 4 Moses 46, 128, 129, 150, 166, 188, 193, 242, 249

Moskal, Jeanne 88 n. 48 moths 150, 168 Mount Ebel 212 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus: The Magic Flute 131 n. 29 Mundane Eggs and Shell 28, 125, 134, 135–6, 187, 201, 252 music 23–4, 92 Jerusalem’s 225 Moravian 109 see also Handel; song Muslims 235 Naamah 56, 73 nakedness 69, 106 names 115–16, 146, 184 Divine 67–8 of God 207 n. 24 Napoleon Bonaparte 56 n. 36 wars 172, 187, 191, 199, 229 nations peace among 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 73, 74, 92, 105, 122, 140, 156, 169, 217, 226, 252 lack of 25 Plow of 203, 204 Nativity 113, 114 Natural Law 39, 104, 227 Natural Religion 151 n. 9, 240, 255–6 Nature 59, 175, 183, 258 Goddess 31, 62, 125, 164, 240 shrivels 211 New Jerusalem 70, 125, 129, 140, 230, 232 Newman, Barbara 227 n. 11 Newton, Isaac 23, 40, 103, 126, 129, 132 n. 31, 159, 161, 174, 194, 197, 215, 237 n. 28, 240 Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms 136 see also ‘Bacon & Newton & Locke’ Nietzsche 11 Nimrod 132, 154 Noah (ark-builder) 48, 126, 128, 132, 154 Ark 134 Noah (Hebrew daughter) 212 Nordensköld, August 111 n. 33 Norns 53, 130, 169 n. 39, 206 Norse mythology 59, 126, 127, 130, 230 see also Valhalla Northwestern University ix, 146–7 obedience 132, 239 Albion 173, 174 God 97, 102 n. 15, 103, 229 Paul 106 Southcott 76, 82 O’Donaghue, Heather 53, 59 n. 46

Index Og 180 n. 27, 192, 193 Og & Anak 193, 219 Og & Sihon 192 Oothoon 184–5, 224 n. 4, 230 opacity/opake 46, 119, 186, 235 orality 145–6, 150 orator 2, 24, 31, 145, 150, 224 Orc 9 n. 18, 55, 134, 160 orgasm 69, 246, 248 Origen 15 Orthodox Church 110 Osiris 47 Ossian 145 Ott, Judith 225 Ottery St Mary 76 Ovid: Metamorphoses 79 Owen Pughe, William 75, 77–8, 126, 130–1, 231 n. 16 Heroic Elegies 55, 131, 145 Oxford 108 n. 21, 152, 186, 190, 230 Oxford Street 8, 48, 78 n. 27 Paine, Tom 37 n. 43, 53, 77, 126, 130, 131–2, 180, 188 n. 40, 198, 218 and Washington 178 n. 21 The Age of Reason 145, 159 n. 26, 187, 197 n. 2 American Crisis 145 ‘Origin of Freemasonry’ 39, 51, 126, 131–2, 198 Palamabron 204, 239 Paley, Morton 8, 11, 12, 14, 16, 19, 22, 24, 50, 55, 58, 59, 60, 62, 64 n. 54, 65, 80, 85, 96, 113, 135, 136, 145, 148, 157, 158, 167, 170, 174, 190, 194, 195, 217 n. 50, 218, 223, 225, 227, 228, 249, 253 n. 2 Palladio, Andrea 39 Palmer, Samuel 217, 225 n. 8, 247 Panacea Society 80, 81 n. 38, 229 n. 14 Panentheism 95 Paracelsus 29, 215 n. 46 Paradise 33, 63, 81, 100, 175 of art 43 Boehme 30, 31, 34, 75, 81, 186, 241, 243, 244, 247, 255 n. 4 Rivers of 246 see also heaven Pareus, David 11, 19, 20–2, 26, 41, 108 n. 21 Paris 201, 204, 209 Parker, James 37 n. 43 Patmos 64, 185, 195, 224, 225, 230, 249 n. 51 patriarchy 52, 87, 88, 126, 131, 172, 173, 209–10, 226 Paul, St (Saul) 10, 45, 68, 104–7, 120, 124–5, 166, 198, 224 conversion 223

305

peace 10, 84, 101, 120, 141, 168 n. 38, 172, 228 Isaiah’s vision of 70, 156, 231, 232 Peachey 53 performance 2, 146, 147, 150 Persephone 89, 151, 152, 190 Persyn, Mary Kelly 13 Peter, St 225, 229 phallus 244 worship 109 Phipps, William 113 Pitt, William 77, 209 planets 247 Plato: Critias 62 Pliny 27 Plow cosmic 209 golden 202 of Nations 203, 204 Rintrah’s 239 n. 35 Urizen’s 242, 258 Polypus 114, 161, 164, 193, 211–12, 213, 256 prayer 110 Priestley, Joseph 189, 218, 236 n. 23 prodigal son 115, 181, 247 Protestants 124–5, 217, 223 Pughe, William Owen, see Owen Pughe, William Pullman, Philip 147 pyramids 40, 176, 237 Pythagoras 198 Quantock (Gwantok, Kwantok), John 51, 53 Rachel 213 Ragan 53, 167, 210 n. 31 Rahab 60, 68, 169, 179, 186, 197, 199, 207, 211, 212, 213, 214–15, 219, 220, 221, 238 rainbow 27, 86, 149, 160, 194, 218, 253 woven by Erin 192 Raine, Kathleen 11, 13 reading aloud 145–6, 147–8, 150 fourfold 41 Reason 40, 55, 125, 132, 177, 197, 201 Goddess of 59, 131, 196, 204 Religion 75 False 103 ‘Hid in War’ 60, 65–6, 91, 93, 120, 134, 136, 196, 220, 221, 225, 230, 234, 235, 256 Natural 240, 255–6 sexual 173 Wheel of 65, 105, 120, 235 see also Church /churches Rephaim 184, 192

306

Index

Resurrection 46, 165, 221, 222, 232, 234, 245, 247 Reuben 53–4, 65, 148, 162, 179, 193, 211, 216, 231 and Bilhah 33, 53, 162 Divisions 179–81, 209 and Leah 239 and Tirzah 54, 197, 227 Revelation, Book of 10, 11, 65, 159, 165, 182, 190, 191, 194, 195, 202, 203, 208, 220, 226, 232, 237, 240, 249 n. 51, 253, 257 Apocalypse 71, 119, 148, 152, 183, 211, 244–5 and Book of Enoch 48 imagery 25 lake of fire 57, 71 and music 24–5 Jerusalem in 70, 125, 129, 140, 157, 230, 232, 247 Jesus in 46 reading 145, 146, 251 seven-headed beasts 60, 82, 178, 204 synchronisms 12, 22, 152 and visionary theatre 19, 20–3 Woman Clothed with the Sun 22, 31, 67, 71, 234 Reynolds, Sir Joshua 13 Rhoads, David 145 n. 1, 146 Richmond, 2nd Duke of 52 Richmond, Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of 51, 52, 156, 195, 199, 210 n. 32, 215, 231 righteousness 67, 72, 76, 79, 83, 148, 169, 185, 198, 219 n. 56 self- 58, 136, 155, 160, 165 Rimius, Henry 109, 110 Rintrah 239 Rix, Robert 36 n. 36 Robespierre, Maximilien 99, 131, 178 n. 21, 196 Robinson, Henry Crabb 8, 29, 48, 78, 95, 111 Romney, George 61 Roos, Jacques 32 n. 30 Rose, Edward 13 Rosicrucians 26, 27, 108 n. 21, 138 Rossling, Barbara 70 n. 5 Rosso, G.A. 221 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 198, 199, 201, 204 Rowland, Christopher vii, viii–ix, 9 n. 19, 20 n. 3, 46, 69 n. 4, 148 Royal Society 36 Ruth 207 Sabrina 87, 215 sacraments 236–7 baptism 120, 237 Eucharist 211

sacrifice of children 51 n. 22, 90, 126, 162, 177, 192, 200 Druid 39, 53, 131 of the Lamb 164 Samaria 70 Sarah 106 Satan 6, 11, 15, 55–6, 57, 103, 171, 180–1, 198 Watch Fiends 183, 184–5 see also Lucifer Satanic mills, see mills Satanic Void, see Ulro Saul, King 201 n. 12 Saviour 2, 34, 63, 64, 65, 85, 90, 103, 105, 110, 151, 153, 168, 169, 174, 176, 180, 182, 184, 185, 186, 191, 196, 202, 253 Kingdom of 5, 41, 45, 94, 119, 138, 170, 197, 221, 245 see also Divine Body song 21, 23–4, 161, 214, 255 Schorer, Mark 10, 41 Schuchard, Martha Keith 36 n. 37, 107 science 245 Scofield (Schofield, Skofield) 51, 53, 154, 155, 158, 161, 163, 188, 195, 212 sedition trial, 1804 51, 53, 153, 154, 156, 195 Selfhood 6, 7, 32–3, 52, 57, 75, 104, 152, 158, 159, 163, 164, 166, 172, 193, 252, 259 of Albion 55–6, 58, 85, 88, 168, 172, 178, 181–2, 204, 243 annihilation 33, 244, 255 and Reuben 54 of Sons of Albion 163, 164 see also Satan; Ulro Selsey 51, 184, 215 serpents 28, 75, 91 bruised 79 Druid 129 fire- 183–4 see also dragons; worms Seven in Apocalypse 146 in The Aurora 29–30, 31 in Chymical Wedding 26–7 deadly sins 165 furnaces 103, 122, 192, 200, 256 -headed beasts 15, 22, 71, 91, 221, 229 n. 14, 237 in Revelation 60, 82, 178, 204 veils 60 visions in Revelation 20–1 Seven Eyes of God 115, 117, 202 Seven Stars 40, 82 of Joanna Southcott 77–8, 229 n. 14

Index sexuality 66, 109, 155, 189, 238–9 at Apocalypse 245 homosexuality see also hermaphrodite Sha, Richard 239 n. 33 Shadow 55, 58, 59 Albion’s 63, 175, 241 Ulro 91, 152 Vala as 30, 66, 68–9, 74, 84–6, 88–9, 92, 101, 106, 131, 134, 155, 158, 163, 167, 175, 177, 195, 226, 254 Shakespeare, William 13, 53, 129 King Lear 61, 87, 153, 165, 167, 242 Cordelia 61–2, 87, 167 Kent 61 Lear 61, 166, 241, 247 Tate’s version 61 The Tempest 154 shame 73–4, 86, 155, 157, 167, 168, 175, 201, 234 Sharp, William 75–6, 80, 81, 82, 217 n. 50 Shechem 54, 220 Shiloh 76, 81, 86, 193, 225, 228 Shimer College viii, 146, 147 Sihon 192, 193 Simeon 54 sin 93, 94, 104, 119, 154, 167, 169, 185, 188, 194, 198, 218, 223, 224, 239, 247 seven deadly sins 165 sinners 194, 259 Friend of 96, 150, 201, 228 Singstudes 108 Sleep of Albion 27, 30, 62, 63, 84, 97, 118, 122, 160, 164, 165, 169, 172, 189, 190, 191, 221 Druidic 172 of death 33, 114, 119, 169, 217 of Eternals 186 at Gethsemane 186, 231 of Jerusalem 83, 87, 88, 89, 91, 149, 168, 192, 195 of Reuben 53 of Ulro 96, 97, 135, 151, 160, 169, 199, 252, 255, 256–7 Sloss, D.J. 59 Smaragdine Table 237 Smith, Thomas 128 n. 13 Society of Antiquaries 25, 27, 36, 48, 128 n. 15, 139, 186 n. 38, 217 see also Archaeologia Society for Constitutional Information 37, 77, 217 n. 50 Socrates 240 Sodom 70 Sol 47

307

Sommer, Michael ix, 74 n. 14, 97 n. 7 song 12, 24 of Jerusalem 25, 86, 225, 247, 248 of Jesus/Saviour song 21, 23–4, 44, 151–2, 161, 172, 198, 214, 255 Albion rejects 151–2 of Los 24, 140–1, 231, 232 of Mary 113, 207 oratorios 24 ‘Song of the Lamb’ 90 of Sons of Albion 24 Sons of Albion 45, 50–2, 157, 177, 194, 210 bonified 204 Druid, fallen 24, 53, 122, 125, 126, 131, 155, 156, 162, 163, 164, 169, 191 flee altars 174 songs 24 as wheels 153–4, 165, 194, 256 see also Hand; Hyle Sophia (Divine Wisdom) 32, 47, 72–5, 177, 233, 253 Sophocles: Antigone 20 n. 5 South Molton Street, London 64, 78 n. 27, 123, 182, 184, 220 Southcott, Joanna 35, 53, 67, 72, 75–83, 110 n. 28, 228–9, 236 erotic spirituality 78–81 pregnancy 81, 228 Seven Stars of 77–8, 229 n. 14 Sharp and Pughe 76–8 visionary enactments 81–3 as Woman Clothed with the Sun 79, 82 The Strange Effects of Faith 76 Southey, Robert 1, 8, 48, 77, 78, 209 space 5, 71, 105, 123, 136, 140, 152, 181, 192, 193, 201, 231–2, 252, 257 at Apocalypse 246 Spain 226, 228 Spector, Sheila 172 n. 4 Spectre/s 6, 40, 56–8 of the Dead 65 Druid 57, 60 of Eternals 186 in flight 175–6 guards Enitharmon 56 hermaphrodite 213 and Los 25, 40, 58–9, 66, 154–7, 163, 182, 229–30, 233–4, 235, 236–7, 242, 254 of Albion 57, 172, 178 performed 147 see also Satan Spenser, Edmund 46 Faerie Queen 53 Stanislavski, Konstantin 43 Starry Wheels 30, 64, 152, 153, 159, 160, 164, 188, 194, 255–6, 257

308

Index

Stedman, John Gabriel 58 n. 41 Stevenson, W.H. 14, 16, 148, 158, 187, 204 n. 19, 218, 225, 247 Stieg, Elizabeth 62 Stone of Bohan 180 Stonehenge 123, 126, 129, 131, 205, 226, 241 stones 139, 155, 180, 247 London Stone 126, 155, 186, 241 precious, see gems Stothard, Thomas 38, 76–7, 188, 217 n. 50, 236 n. 24 Stukeley, William 126, 128–30, 131, 180, 182 Avebury 129–30 Sublime Allegory 19, 40–2 suffering 95, 103 Sundin, Rebecca viii, 147 sun-gods 128 swans 113 n. 37, 139, 158, 215 swan-woman 85, 158, 225 Swedenborg, Emanuel 47, 62, 111–13, 172, 183, 200, 224, 236 n. 22 biblical books endorsed by 191 Conjugial Love 73 n. 12, 107, 111, 112 Divine Love 112 Divine Providence 169 erotic spirituality 111–12 Heaven and Hell 112, 184 ‘History of Worms’ 149 Journal of Dreams 111 Memorable Relations 112 Swedenborgians 77, 108, 172 Swinburne, Algernon Charles 9, 64 synchrolocality 48 Tabernacle 173, 178, 215 Female 214, 233–4, 257 veil 206 Taliesin 171 n. 2 Tamar 68 Tannenbaum, Leslie 61 Tartary 205, 256 Tate, Nahum 61 Tatham, Frederick 8, 29, 77 n. 20 Teller, R. 3 n. 6 temple-building 140 n. 41 Temples 166 in Bryant 127–8 Druids’ 125, 126, 130, 163, 177, 178, 206, 249, 256 Ezekiel’s 133 Hebrew 176 London 177 Solomon’s 39, 129 Urizen’s 133–4, 204–5 Teresa of Avila 226 Exclamations of the Soul to God 217–18

Tertullian 115 n. 41 Thames, River 92, 182, 225, 230, 231 Tharmas 55, 187, 209, 242, 258 theatre 2, 3, 203, 205, 251 and gender 208 n. 27 see also visionary theatre Thor 230 Tilloch, Alexander 27 time 5, 47, 71, 105, 123, 136, 140, 152–3, 161, 181, 193, 201, 206, 231–2, 252–3 at Apocalypse 246 chariot 190 rainbow of 192 synchronic 22, 251 timescape 250 see also Eternity time of love 70, 86, 87, 91, 166, 167, 174, 175, 225–6, 248 Tiriel 62 Tirzah 54, 169, 179, 197, 211, 212, 219, 240 Titus (Roman general) 199 Tooke, Horne 77 Townley, Jane 80 trade 168, 235 Transfiguration 46–7, 96–7, 139, 150–1, 222, 232, 242, 245, 255 painted by WB 118–19, 218 transformations 19, 158 apocalyptic 15, 42–3, 119–20 translucence 46, 101, 186, 187, 193, 232, 235 Tree, Albion’s, of Knowledge of Good and Evil/Moral Law/Mystery 65, 134, 188, 200, 202, 203, 239, 256 enters Los 65, 200, 202 Tree of Life 65, 93, 156, 160, 190, 224, 235, 248 trees 6–7 Trilithons 126, 129 Trinity 115–17, 246 Deist/Druid 40, 125, 129, 132, 169, 178, 182, 197, 212 n. 36, 214 nuclear 192 Wheels 256 Trusler, Dr 12 Tubal-Cain 28, 63–4, 205 Tulk, Charles Augustus 8, 112 Twenty Four, the 165 Eternals 186 Twisse, William 23 Tyburn 125, 174, 208 Tyre 93, 141, 175, 235 Udan Adan 134 Ulro 1, 4, 5, 6–7, 15, 165, 171, 177, 186, 215, 216, 252, 257–8

Index Albion in 73, 94, 104, 119, 124, 168, 181, 183, 188–9, 215 deified 187 Druid structures 125 Jerusalem in 86, 251 Jesus in 180 Sleep of 96, 97, 135, 151, 160, 169, 199, 252, 255, 256–7 time in 251 Vala in 167 Uncircumcision 175, 189, 193, 206 Unlawful Societies Act 38 Upcott, William 253 n. 3 Urien 55 Urizen 40, 44, 46, 55, 62, 130, 160, 175, 198, 216, 220, 242, 252 at Apocalypse 258 as architect 40, 55, 125, 234 as dragon 160 seduced by Vala 210 sons 210 temple 133–4, 204–5 Urthona 57, 175, 229–30, 242, 248 as Los’s Spectre 58–9, 154–7, 175, 182, 233, 234, 236–7 Los becomes 242, 254 Los compels to work 66, 163 in illumination 154 Los smites 25, 40, 59, 63 tears from Los’s back 154, 178 on Los’s watch 229–32 utopia 147 Uzzah 213 vagina 85, 135 Vala 31, 32, 52, 59–60, 208, 252 and Albion 62, 74, 167–8, 175, 178–9, 194, 256 and Babylon 158 character 196 despair 195–6 in family 47 hermaphrodite 209–10, 211, 213 in illumination 195–6 and Jerusalem 59, 74, 84–5, 86–7, 153–4, 164–5, 175, 177 seeks to destroy her 226–7 as her Shadow 30, 66, 68–9, 74, 84–6, 88–9, 92, 101, 106, 131, 134, 155, 158, 163, 167, 175, 177, 195, 226, 254 undermines her 167, 175, 177, 208 veils and tramples her 88–9 and Luvah 55, 155, 226 rules 91, 210 synchronisms 254

309

and terror 252 triumph 91, 92–3, 176–9 war goddess 167–8, 226 weaving 60, 209, 220, 227 shuttles 24, 88, 92, 177, 184, 254 Vala’s daughters 66, 68, 126, 130, 194, 196, 226–7, 234, 257 dance 227 and Luvah 210 weaving 122, 169 n. 39, 209, 211, 227, 228, 229, 23, 232–3, 235, 249, 256 Vala’s veil 12, 60–1, 63, 68, 87, 89, 135, 166, 167, 168, 169, 199, 205, 256, 257 Valhalla 120, 187, 226 vampires 58 Valkyrie 53, 130 vegetating 61, 164, 165, 166, 168, 170, 183, 193 vegetation 189, 200, 236 Vegetative Universe 160, 199 veils 69, 166 Beulah’s 166 of Moral Law 119 of Tabernacle 206 of tears 168 see also Vala’s veil Vellacott, Barbara viii, ix Versluis, Arthur 31 n. 29 Verulam 212 Virgil: Aeneid 97 Virgin 71 Virgin Mary, see Mary (mother of Jesus) Virgin Mother 189 see also Mary (mother of Jesus) virginity 32, 72, 73, 78–9, 167, 202, 245 Viscomi, Joseph 14 vision Divine, see Divine Vision four-fold 6, 7, 33, 69, 124, 138, 242, 246–7, 251, 252 visionary theatre ix, 2–3, 4, 19–43, 98, 122, 146, 148, 203, 258 alchemical 25–8 and Allegory 40–2 Apocalyptic images 42–3 and Boehme 28–35 and Freemasonry 35–40 and music 23–5 and Revelation 21–3 Voltaire 132 n. 31, 197 n. 1, 198, 199, 201, 204, 219 vulva 176, 228, 244 n. 44 see also Female Tabernacle Waite, A. E. 36 Walchuk, Shelby 89 n. 50, 152, 153

310

Index

Wales 78 n. 27 bard 171 n. 2 Druids 55, 167 legends 55, 77, 130, 230–1 Wallis, J.P.R. 59 war 10, 31, 58, 63, 70, 85, 161, 176, 185, 186, 187–8, 190, 191, 204, 210, 219, 230 British 10, 51 gods of 51 wars of love 245 machine 120, 156, 164, 194, 219, 254 Napoleonic 172, 187, 191, 199, 229 ‘Religion Hid in’ 31, 120, 134, 196, 220, 221, 225, 229, 230, 234, 235, 256 Vala promotes 92, 167–8, 177, 226 webs of 155 Ward, Aileen 50 Warner, Nicholas 168 Warner, Richard 189–90 Watson, Bishop Richard: Apology 106 Watts, Isaac 53 weaving 52–3, 130, 161, 231, 242, 256, 258 by Emanations 230 by Enitharmon 56, 134, 233–4 by Erin 192 forgiveness 25, 87, 255 by Vala 60, 209, 226, 227 by Vala’s daughters 122, 169 n. 39, 209, 211, 227, 228, 229, 231, 232–3, 235, 249, 256 webs of war 52, 60 see also fibres of love; looms Web of Life 256 Webster, Brenda 41, 84 Weir, David 60 Wesley, John 108 Wheel of Religion 65, 105, 120, 235 Wheel of Natural Religion 240, 255–6 Wheels 34, 138, 154, 162, 164, 165, 206, 211, 255–6, 257 Enitharmon’s weaving 234 Ezekiel’s 30, 224 of fire 29, 65, 153, 224 of Hand 206 of punishment 167–8 of war 87, 211 Water-wheels 161, 162, 255 see also Starry Wheels Whitaker, Ann 174 Whitefield, George 199, 218, 223 Whitmarsh-Knight, David 14–15 Whittaker, Jason 53, 179 n. 23 whore 31, 33, 34 see also harlots Wicker Man 126, 130, 188, 191, 193

Wicksteed, Joseph 151, 158, 190, 199, 208, 225, 248 Wilkin, Charles 249 Williams, Charles 10 wine-press 55, 103, 229 wings 71 of Beulah 166 of her daughters 194 of cherubim 25, 87, 255, 257 of Enitharmon 84, 90, 149 of Jerusalem 74–5, 86, 93, 134, 140–1, 149, 159, 160, 168, 232, 235 of Spectre 201 winged suns 182 Wisdom 41, 67–8 see also Mirror of Divine Wisdom; Sophia Witke, Joanne 13, 41, 52, 193, 200, 216, 225 Wittreich, Joseph 11, 19, 21 Wokler, Robert 214 n. 45 Woman Clothed with the Sun 71–2, 76, 174 n. 14 paintings of 22, 71–2 in Revelation 22, 31, 67, 71, 82, 234 Southcott 67, 76, 79, 82 womb 113, 256–7 Wood, John 130, 139, 180, 237 n. 28 Choir Guare 131, 168 Wordsworth, William: ‘Salisbury Plain’ 130 worms 163, 178 Adam’s 73, 75, 233 Hyle as 53, 228, 229 Reuben as 180 Swedenborg’s history of 149 see also serpents wrath 30, 152, 163, 224, 241, 242, 243, 244 Wren, Christopher 39 Yates, Francis 26 Yeats, W.B. 9, 117 n. 45 Ymer/Ymir 62, 138 Young, Edward: Night Thoughts 98–101, 153, 183, 245 Youngquist, Paul 7, 12, 41, 49 n. 13, 58 Zinzendorf, Nicholas von 108, 109, 110, 174 n. 14 Zoas 6, 34, 45, 46, 54–6, 116, 167, 181, 187, 241 at Apocalypse 243, 244, 245, 246, 258 in Ezekiel 64, 137, 178 The Four Zoas 47, 54–5, 97, 134, 160, 208, 230, 233, 247 see also Cathedral Cities Zodiac 152, 192, 255

Figs 1-7 from Archaeologia II (1773)—Engravings by James Basire Fig. 1: Plate IV (p 48) Ancient Monuments in Penrith Churchyard (Basire)

Fig. 2: Plate VI (p 107) Account of the Monument Commonly Ascribed to Catigern. (Basire)

Fig. 3: Plate VII (p 116) Kit’s Cot-House

Fig. 4: Plate VIII (p 126) Stone Hatchets (Basire)

Fig. 5: Plate IX (p 133) Font at Bridekirk

Fig. 6: Plate XVII (p 225) Tartarian Antiquities (Basire)

Fig. 7: Plate XVIII* (p 235) Tartarian Idols (Basire)

Fig. 8: Volume II, Plate IV (Basire/Blake?) From Jacob Bryant’s New System: An Analysis of Ancient Mythology (1775)