Bible3 Satan

The two words 'devil' and Satan are often used interchangeably in the Bible and in Blake.

Job.2  (In this passage it would appear that Satan was numbered among 
the sons of God.)

1. [1] Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves 
2. before the LORD, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the LORD.
3. [2] And the LORD said unto Satan, From whence comest thou? And Satan answered 
4. the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down 
5. in it.
6. [3] And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is 
7. none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and 
8. escheweth evil? and still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me 
9. against him, to destroy him without cause.
10. [4] And Satan answered the LORD, and said, Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath 
11. will he give for his life.
12. [6] And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, he is in thine hand; but save his life.
13. [7] So went Satan forth from the presence of the LORD, and smote Job with sore 
14. boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown.

Zech.3

1. [1] And he shewed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him.
2. [2] And the LORD said unto Satan, The LORD rebuke thee, O Satan; even the LORD that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee: is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?

Matt.4

[1] Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.
[2] And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.
[3] And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.
[4] But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
[5] Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,
[6] And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
[7] Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
[8] Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;
[9] And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.
[10] Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
[11] Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.

---

From The Marriage of Heaven and Earth we read:

Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling.
And being restrain'd it by degrees becomes passive till it is only the shadow of desire.
The history of this is written in Paradise Lost, & the Governor or Reason is call'd Messiah.
And the original Archangel or possessor of the command of the heavenly host, is call'd the Devil or Satan and his children are call'd Sin & Death.
But in the Book of Job Miltons Messiah is call'd Satan.
For this history has been adopted by both parties.
It indeed appear'd to Reason as if Desire was cast out, but the Devil's account is, that the Messiah fell, & formed a heaven of what he stole from the Abyss.
(Erdman 34-5)

From The Four Zoas (Erdman 367):

And all the Songs of Beulah sounded comfortable notes
Not suffring doubt to rise up from the Clouds of the Shadowy
     Female 
Then myriads of the Dead burst thro the bottoms of their tombs
Descending on the shadowy females clouds in Spectrous terror
Beyond the Limit of Translucence on the Lake of Udan Adan
These they namd Satans & in the Aggregate they namd them Satan

(Erdman 672) Inscription for Our End is Come:

Satan's holy Trinity The Accuser The Judge & The Executioner

Plate 3 of Milton (Erdman 97):
They Builded Great Golgonooza Times on Times Ages on Ages
First Orc was Born then the Shadowy Female: then All Los's Family
At last Enitharmon brought forth Satan Refusing Form, in vain
The Miller of Eternity made subservient to the Great Harvest
That he may go to his own Place Prince of the Starry Wheels

bible3 Daughters of

Gen.5

1. [4] And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters:
2. [7] And Seth lived after he begat Enos eight hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daughters:
3. [10] And Enos lived after he begat Cainan eight hundred and fifteen years, and begat sons and daughters:
4. [13] And Cainan lived after he begat Mahalaleel eight hundred and forty years, and begat sons and daughters:
5. [16] And Mahalaleel lived after he begat Jared eight hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters:
6. [19] And Jared lived after he begat Enoch eight hundred years, and begat sons and daughters:
7. [22] And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters:
8. [26] And Methuselah lived after he begat Lamech seven hundred eighty and two years, and begat sons and daughters:
9. [30] And Lamech lived after he begat Noah five hundred ninety and five years, and begat sons and daughters:

Blake used 'daughters of ...  freely, strictly comparable to 'sons of...
It occurs often in his poetry, but several of them are of special significance.

  VISIONS of the Daughters of Albion:

   MILTON                  

PLATE 1 [i] Preface.
The Stolen and Perverted Writings of Homer & Ovid: of
Plato &
Cicero. which all Men ought to contemn: are set up by
artifice
against the Sublime of the Bible. but when the New Age is at
leisure to Pronounce; all will be set right: & those
Grand Works
of the more ancient & consciously & professedly Inspired Men,
will hold their proper rank, & the Daughters of Memory shall become the Daughters of Inspiration.

PLATE 2  MILTON
Daughters of Beulah! Muses who inspired the Poets Song
Record the journey of immortal Milton thro' your Realms
Of terror & mild moony lustre, in soft sexual delusions
Of varied beauty, to delight the wanderer...

PLATE 5 (of Milton)
And this is the manner of the Daughters of Albion in

their beauty:

To the beautiful Daughters of Albion! they sport before the Kings
Clothed in the skin Of the Victim! blood! human blood! is the life
And delightful food of the Warrior: the well fed

Warriors flesh
Of him who is slain in War: fills the Valleys of

Ephraim with    
Breeding Women walking in pride & bringing forth under green trees

Plate 14

What do I here before the Judgment? without my Emanation?
With the daughters of memory, & not with the daughters of
     inspiration[?]
I in my Selfhood am that Satan: I am that Evil One! He is 
my Spectre! in my obedience to loose him from my Hells
To claim the Hells, my Furnaces, I go to Eternal Death

PLATE 10 of Jerusalem:                                                       

Into the Furnaces & into the valleys of the Anvils of Death
And into the mountains of the Anvils & of the heavy Hammers
Till he should bring the Sons & Daughters of Jerusalem to be
The Sons & Daughters of Los that he might protect 
Albions dread Spectres; storming, loud, thunderous & mightyThe Bellows & the Hammers move compell'd by Los's hand.



Here are some daughters of Jerusalem:

Rosenwald LOC
Jerusalem plate 32

Notice that on the right hand bottom is something like the Westminster Cathedral (a symbol of creativity), while the bottom left has St. Paul's Church a symbol of conventionality or conformance. The naked woman is Jerusalem of course with three 'daughters', and the veiled woman is Vala, her shadow or contrary.

bible3 Death

If you study Blake you will soon find that he uses the word ‘Death’ in many different ways. He used the most common use,  the end of physical life in his earliest works. But in his mature thought and poetry he turned the idea on its head:

Physical birth was expressed as Eternal Death or wherever we find some one leaving Eternity for the world.

In the Book of Milton Blake wrote that Milton was walking among the 'Eternals', but when he heard the Bard's Song,

"Then Milton rose up from the heavens of Albion ardorous! 

The whole Assembly wept prophetic, seeing in Miltons face
And in his lineaments divine the shades of Death & Ulro
He took off the robe of the promise, & ungirded himself from the oath of God
And Milton said, I go to Eternal Death! The Nations still
Follow after the detestable Gods of Priam; in pomp
Of warlike selfhood, contradicting and blaspheming.
When will the Resurrection come; to deliver the sleeping body
From corruptibility: O when Lord Jesus wilt thou come?
Tarry no longer; for my soul lies at the gates of death.
I will arise and look forth for the morning of the grave.
I will go down to the sepulcher to see if morning breaks!
I will go down to self annihilation and eternal death,
Lest the Last Judgment come & find me unannihilate
And I be siez'd & giv'n into the hands of my own Selfhood.
The Lamb of God is seen thro' mists & shadows, hov'ring
Over the sepulchers in clouds of Jehovah & winds of Elohim
A disk of blood, distant; & heav'ns & earth's roll dark between
What do I here before thè Judgment? without my Emanation? 

Speaking of Blake's physical death we have a record of it in Poet's Graves:
"Bake died in poverty in 1827 in a room in Fountains Court (off The Strand). It is reported that on the afternoon of his death Blake burst out singing due to the joy of the things he saw in heaven."

In some cultures lamentation at a funeral is not found; instead people are expected to rejoice in a kind of testimonial that a person's physical death is not the end, but a new beginning. That was certainly Blake's faith.

A young man at his father's funeral gave directions  to the organist for several hymns with a spritely tempo. In spite of specific orders she played "Holy     holy   holy" etc.  That demonstrated a clash of cultural values.  Blake also (rather continuously) clashed with his contemporaries.

bible3 faith

False  Faith:The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could percieve.

And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country, placing it under its mental deity;
Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of & enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began Priesthood;
Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales.
And at length they pronounc'd that the Gods had order'd such things.
Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.

Everything that lives is holy (end of MHH)

The most striking tenet of Blake's faith was his vision of the Eternal; it was also his 

primary gift to mankind. Blake lived in an age when the realm of spirit had virtually disappeared from the intellectual horizon. This single fact explains why he stood 

out like a sore thumb in late 18th Century England and why for most of his 

contemporaries he could never be more than an irritant, an eccentric, a madman; 

their most common term of depreciation was 'enthusiast'. His primary concern 

was a world whose existence they not only denied, but held in derision.
It was a world that most of his contemporaries had deliberately closed their minds to. 
He spent his life furiously trying to strike off their mind forged manacles.

The man of faith believes some things; other things he knows by experience. 
Blake had experienced the Eternal from earliest childhood. At times the vision clouded, 
but its reality remained the one unshakeable tenet of his faith.

Blake perceived the five senses as "the chief inlets of Soul in this age" (MHH plate 4). 
The rationalists had imposed upon their world the view that life consists exclusively 
of the five senses. Blake knew better:

"How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way, Is an immense world of delight, 
clos'd by your senses five?" (MHH plate 7)

Blake was keenly alive to another world, a world of Vision, of Imagination, of God, 
which he called the Eternal.

Every child begins in Eternity. Jesus said, "Except you become as little children...."
(From Blake Primer)

Bible3 Devil

For Blake as well as in the Bible Evil is sometimes called the Serpent and sometimes the Devil and sometimes Satan.
In the Old Testament 'devils' appears three times in the Pentateuch and once in Psalms.




In the N.T. the outstanding use of the Devil came in Matthew:
Matt.4:
[1] Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.
[5] Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,
[8] Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;
[11] Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.
[24] And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them.
Notice that we read about the Devil in the Temptation of Jesus, but devils regarding the healings.


How Blake used Devil, etc.





PLATE 4 of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:

(This is an atypical use of the word Devil, written when Blake
spoke as an angry young man.)



The voice of the DevilAll Bibles or sacred codes. have been the causes of the following Errors. 1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a Soul. 2. That Energy. calld Evil. is alone from the Body. & that Reason. calld Good. is alone from the Soul. 3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies. But the following Contraries to these are True 1 Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that calld Body is a portion of Soul discernd by the five Senses. the chief inlets of Soul in this age 2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy. 3 Energy is Eternal Delight
________________
He had more to say about it in Plate 6 of MHH.
After MHH the Devil represented more conventional meanings.



The epitome of Evil in Blake occurs in the
"Great Red Dragon
with Seven heads & ten Horns [who] <he has Satans book
of Accusations lying on the rock open before him>"
(Blake's Last Judgment; Erdman 558)
(From Revelation)






Commons Wikipedia




The Devil is the Mind of the Natural Frame Annotations Bacon75; E625
This work (Erdman 620-32) is well worth reading.
Blake cordially despised Bacon's thought re the natural and mechanical
'frame' of the universe.

[Epilogue to Gates of Paradise] To The Accuser Who is The God of This World Truly My Satan thou art but a Dunce And dost not know the Garment from the Man Every Harlot was a Virgin once Nor canst thou ever change Kate into Nan Tho thou art Worshipd by the Names Divine Of Jesus & Jehovah thou art still The Son of Morn in weary Nights decline The lost Travellers Dream under the Hill (Erdman 269)


Jerusalem PLATE 77:
To the Christians Devils are False Religions
(Erdman 231)

Bible3 God

God is a three letter word. It means a great many things to a great many people.

For example many people use it constantly in profanity.

There are many visions of God.

William Blake spent his life developing his Vision of God.

As a dissenter and contrarian he wrote in MHH Plate 4:
 3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his
Energies. (speaking for the Devil)

(Erdman 34)

As he grew and matured spiritually he spoke often in what he

conceived to be false ‘visions of God.

      To Nobodaddy                                           
Why art thou silent & invisible
Father of jealousy                                             
Why dost thou hide thyself in clouds
From every searching Eye

Why darkness & obscurity      
In all thy words & laws
That none dare eat the fruit but from
The wily serpents jaws
Or is it because Secresy                                        
gains females loud applause                                     

There is a wealth of Blake’s ideas about God in Chapter Five of the Blake Primer:
"Thinking as I do that the Creator 
of this world is a cruel being, and
being a worshipper of Christ, I have to
say: "the Son! oh how unlike the Father":
First God Almighty comes with a thump on
the head; then J.C. comes with a balm
to heal it".
 on A Vision of the Last Judgment [Erdman 565])

      Each person's ultimate reality is his God. 

There is no known objective God (the Russian cosmonauts 

assured us of that many years ago); there are only images of God. 

Some of the outstanding images of God that have shaped the life of 

the world came to us from Moses, Isaiah, Buddha, and Mohammid. 

Finally we have the vision of Jesus, whom Christians consider to be 

an incarnation of God. But perhaps equally influential upon the course 

of history have been the visions of Alexander, Napoleon, and Stalin. 

Their common vision of the dominion of power is near the opposite pole 

from that of the gentle Galilean.

From the British Museum
in Wikipedia

Bible3 The First Day

From The Blakean Bible:
Genesis 1-10
The First Book of Moses:
Called Genesis

The First Day

1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

1:4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day."

Creation 

In the Bible there are two Creation Stories; Blake might have used either, but he came up with another one:

 In Blake's  myth the Four Zoas (eternals) quarreled and wound up delegating Urizen as the Creator:

Library of Congress

Blake did not value creation highly.  Here is part of the travesty:
"5. Restless turnd the immortal inchain'd

Heaving dolorous! anguish'd! unbearable
Till a roof shaggy wild inclos'd
In an orb, his fountain of thought.

6. In a horrible dreamful slumber;
Like the linked infernal chain;
A vast Spine writh'd in torment
Upon the winds; shooting pain'd
Ribs, like a bending cavern
And bones of solidness, froze
Over all his nerves of joy.
And a first Age passed over,
And a state of dismal woe.

7. From the caverns of his jointed Spine,
Down sunk with fright a red
Round globe hot burning deep
Deep down into the Abyss:
Panting: Conglobing, Trembling
Shooting out ten thousand branches
Around his solid bones.
And a second Age passed over,
And a state of dismal woe.

8. In harrowing fear rolling round;
His nervous brain shot branches
Round the branches of his heart.
On high into two little orbs
And fixed in two little caves
Hiding carefully from the wind,
His Eyes beheld the deep,
And a third Age passed over:
And a state of dismal woe.

9. The pangs of hope began,
In heavy pain striving, struggling.
Two Ears in close volutions.
From beneath his orbs of vision
Shot spiring out and petrified
As they grew. And a fourth Age passed
And a state of dismal woe.

10. In ghastly torment sick;
Hanging upon the wind;
Two Nostrils bent down to the deep.
And a fifth Age passed over;
And a state of dismal woe.

11. In ghastly torment sick;
Within his ribs bloated round,
A craving Hungry Cavern;
Thence arose his channeld Throat,
And like a red flame a Tongue
Of thirst & of hunger appeard.
And a sixth Age passed over:
And a state of dismal woe.

12. Enraged & stifled with torment
He threw his right Arm to the north
His left Arm to the south
Shooting out in anguish deep,
And his Feet stampd the nether Abyss
In trembling & howling & dismay.
And a seventh Age passed over:
And a state of dismal woe.

Europe 14

PLATE 14
Ethinthus queen of waters, how thou shinest in the sky:
My daughter how do I rejoice! for thy children flock around
Like the gay fishes on the wave, when the cold moon drinks the
     dew.
Ethinthus! thou art sweet as comforts to my fainting soul:
For now thy waters warble round the feet of Enitharmon.          

Manathu-Vorcyon! I behold thee flaming in my halls,
Light of thy mothers soul! I see thy lovely eagles round;
Thy golden wings are my delight, & thy flames of soft delusion.

Where is my lureing bird of Eden! Leutha silent love!
Leutha, the many colourd bow delights upon thy wings:            
Soft soul of flowers Leutha!
Sweet smiling pestilence! I see thy blushing light:
Thy daughters many changing,
Revolve like sweet perfumes ascending O Leutha silken queen!

Where is the youthful Antamon. prince of the pearly dew,
O Antamon, why wilt thou leave thy mother Enitharmon?
Alone I see thee crystal form,
Floting upon the bosomd air:
With lineaments of gratified desire.
My Antamon the seven churches of Leutha seek thy love.          


I hear the soft Oothoon in Enitharmons tents:
Why wilt thou give up womans secrecy my melancholy child?
Between two moments bliss is ripe:
O Theotormon robb'd of joy, I see thy salt tears flow
Down the steps of my crystal house.                              

Sotha & Thiralatha, secret dwellers of dreamful caves,
Arise and please the horrent fiend with your melodious songs.
Still all your thunders golden hoofd, & bind your horses black.
Orc! smile upon my children!
Smile son of my afflictions.                                     
Arise O Orc and give our mountains joy of thy red light.

She ceas'd, for All were forth at sport beneath the solemn moon 
Waking the stars of Urizen with their immortal songs,
That nature felt thro' all her pores the enormous revelry,
Till morning ope'd the eastern gate.                             
Then every one fled to his station, & Enitharmon wept.

But terrible Orc, when he beheld the morning in the east,

(EDrdman 65-6)

                          About the Text

The earlier plate has the following with links describing some of them:
Ethinthus Leutha Antamon Sotha.

In this plate several others appear:

"her sons and daughters are listed in Damon's Blake Dictionary
Manathu-Vorcyon: this must be a pure invention; I haven't found anyone
who can give a reasonable explanation. The text includes eagle, golden wings
and 'flames of soft delusion'.
Regarding Leutha Sweet smiling pestilence! 
like sweet perfumes ascending O Leutha silken queen!
the youthful Antamon, obviously a son of Enitharmon

All of these entities suggest corruption of one sort or another.
Oothon and Theotormon obviously relate to Visions of the Daughters of Albion,
which Blake had presumably composed before Europe.

Enitharmon propagates the belief that "woman's love is sin", but her
'sons and daughters' concern sexuality to a great degree.

About the Image

This

europe 11

The Text

PLATE 11
Albions Angel rose upon the Stone of Night.                  
He saw Urizen on the Atlantic;
And his brazen Book,
That Kings & Priests had copied on Earth
Expanded from North to South. 

Commons Wikipedia
Europe 11

About the Text

Stone of Night
His brazen book reached over all the world; in other words this parlous condition is universal.

Albion's Angel is the fat old man seen in so many other Blake pictures such as

the title page of The Book of Urizen, but in the Europe 11
picture the old man has a crown, obviously the king.

Blake presumably wrote the Book of Urizen later than Europe,  so we may suppose that he may have come to see the king as a urizenic person with no imagination, his only recourse to pure tradition or law.

About the Images

With bat wrings 'Albion's Angel' sits on a sort of throne with the Book in his lap. Behind the king's head one may discern a cathedral of sorts.

Urizen in contrast is sitting in front of two large strones  ('Ten Commandments'; read also the Stone of Night). He is writing with his right and left hands (think what that means!); his naked left foot sticks out while the right foot is hidden.

Above and below the Title are spreading but leafless branches of the usual tree; the tree is virtually an icon of the fallenness, like the Tree of Mystery.

Back in the main image the two 'angel queens' (See Europe 5) is seen with crossed scepters, while "serpents dart from their robes" (Erdman Illuminated Blake; p.169)

Urizen is writing with both hands: writing the laws of course to be added to the Book.