Milton 3

Rosenwald LC
Book of Milton

The identity of these three figures has been considered variously:

1) the spectre on the platform; on the side are Los and Enitharmon.


2) Rintrah, Satan and Palamabron.


3) the Elect, the Reprobate, the Redeemed.

From Plate 5 of Milton:

And this is the manner of the Daughters of Albion in their beauty
Every one is threefold in Head & Heart & Reins, & every one
Has three Gates into the Three Heavens of Beulah which shine
Translucent in their Foreheads & their Bosoms & their Loins
Surrounded with fires unapproachable: but whom they please
They take up into their Heavens in  intoxicating  delight   
For the Elect cannot be Redeemd, but Created continually
By Offering & Atonement in the crue[l]ties of Moral Law
Hence the three Classes of Men take their fix'd destinations

From Plates 7-8 of

Here the Three Classes of Mortal Men take their fixd destinations
And hence they overspread the Nations of the whole Earth & hence
The Web of Life is woven: & the tender sinews of life created
And the Three Classes of Men regulated by Los's hammer.         

PLATE 7
The first, The Elect from before the foundation of the World:   
The second, The Redeem'd. The Third, The Reprobate & form'd
To destruction from the mothers womb: 
Of the first class was Satan: with incomparable mildness;
His primitive tyrannical attempts on Los: with most endearing
     love    
He soft intreated Los to give to him Palamabrons station;

(Erdman 100)

In prosaic language those who know nothing and 

don't want to know anything Blake thought of as the Elect; 

those who want to know something he call the Redeemed.

Those whose imagination has enabled them to grasp something of 

Reality and who can express it were the Reprobate.

The prophets were called reprobate and are generally persecuted

in one way or another.

Prophets are subjected to 

Harassment and suffering which people and institutions inflict upon 

others for being different in their faith, world view, culture, or race. 

Persecution seeks to intimidate, silence, punish, or even to kill people.



Old Testament Israel was the agent of persecution of nations 

(Judges 2:11-23 ; Leviticus 26:7-8 ). The Bible gives special attention 

to Israel's fate in Egypt (Exodus 1-3 ) and in the Exile (Psalm 137:1 ). 

On an individual level, Saul persecuted David (1 Samuel 19:9-12 ), 

and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were persecuted because 

they refused to worship the image of the king (Daniel 3:1 ). Jezebel 

persecuted the prophets of the Lord, and the prophet Elijah persecuted 

and killed the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:1 ). The prophets—Amos 

(1 Kings 7:10-12 ), Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:19 ; Jeremiah 15:15 ; 

Jeremiah 37-38 ), and Urijah (Jeremiah 26:20-23 )—suffered persecution 

because they fleshed out the will of God in adverse circumstances 

(In Studylight.org)




Blake felt persecuted in various ways and numbered himself among Moses,

Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Jesus.

Fighting Blake 2

Wiki Commons
Portrait by
Thomas Phillips

Blake was not a tall man, but well formed, stocky, muscular.  He had a violent temper at times and on one occasion had to resort to fisticuffs.

He was also a city man, staying pretty much in London and it's close surroundings. But on one occasion he was invited to use a fairly large cottage on the sea--at Felpam.   


He wrote that "Felpham is a sweet place for Study. because 
it is more Spiritual than London."

The cottage was about 50 yards down the road from a 
military barrack housing a number of soldiers; A drunk 
soldier had wandered into Blake's garden. Blake
politely asked him to leave, but it wasn't to be. Hard words
were exchanged, and Blake turned him around and taking 
him on his elbows propelled him out of the Garden. The 
man remained outside and continued to revile Blake.
Using the same method Blake propelled him about 50

yards to the barrack.

Blake found himself charged with high treason by the soldier,
John Scofield by name, but the jurors completed exonerated Blake.

With that matter settled Blake returned to London, where he
spent the rest of his life.

Blake Primer

All interpreters of Blake have their own viewpoint about his work:
The graphically inclined of course tend to focus on that facet.
Politically conscious students of Blake may likely come up with something like Prophet Against Empire.
A specialist in literature might write something in the vein of Fearful Symmetry.
Then we have biographers and encylopedists.
Spiritually minded folk may see something in Blake that the materially minded are apt to miss.
Recent Blake literature has come largely from secular interpreters. The religious community for the most part have totally ignored Blake. Nevertheless he was a profoundly spiritual man. This introduction to Blake focuses on his spiritual life as expressed in his aesthetics, politics, and psychology.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE in a short biographical sketch recounts those events which largely determined the shape of his career. It also gives the first thumbnail outline of his work.

CHAPTER TWO provides the reader with some of the basic equipment he will need to begin to read Blake with comprehension.

CHAPTER THREE Some simpler Blake poetry (Simple only in the sense that some meaning readily emerges.)

CHAPTER Four interprets Blake's faith as it developed through the circumstances of his life. My distinctive view of that development includes a change of direction or attitude toward Christ in Blake's early forties.

CHAPTER Five traces Blake's struggle with God through the early images of Nobodaddy, Father of Jealousy, Urizen, and the God of this World, to his "first Vision of Light" and the resulting
commitment to what he called (among other things) Jesus the Imagination.

CHAPTER Six explains Blake's understanding of the Bible, his primary source. Blake cast light on biblical ideas, and conversely the Bible explains Blake. Redemption history, the struggle between
Jehovah and Astarte, the symbology of Ezekiel and Revelation are some of the topics dealt with. (If you want a quick introduction to the relationship between Blake poetry and the Bible go here.)

CHAPTER Seven details Blake's relationship to the established church, his view of church history, his attitude as a dissenter against a state church and other forms of inauthentic authority, his
relationship to Quakers, Methodists, and Deists as well as his personal associations, seen imaginatively as a religious community.

CHAPTER Eight treats Blake's sexuality, his attitudes toward prevailing sexual mores, his incorporation of biblical viewpoints toward sex, especially in the symbology of the heterodox tradition.

CHAPTER Nine describes the development of the mythology that forms the framework of Blake's major works.

---

The primary sources for this work of course were Blake's poetry and pictures and the Bible. The most significant secondary sources were Northrup Frye's Fearful Symmetry, Milton Percival's Circle of Destiny, Kathleen Raine's Blake and Tradition, and C.G. Jung's Memories, Dreams, and Reflections.

I have no special academic qualifications in this field. My real qualifications are a lifetime commitment both to the Christian faith in general and to William Blake's expression of it in particular. Judging from the literature those qualifications must be close to unique among writers on Blake

Milton 2

E 2

 
At the top is a large star,

then a large MILTON and the
 

       MILTON

          Book the First

At the top is a large star,

which is said to represent 

Milton, then MILTON, Book 

the First.

Daughters of Beulah! Muses who inspire 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 and repose
His burning thirst & freezing hunger!

    The 'immortal Milton' has left Heaven for the time being
and entered the realm of Beulah, but not to rest, as some
do, but for the specific purpose of fixing what was wrong
in his former life.


................................... Come into my hand 

By your mild power; descending down the Nerves of my right arm

From out the Portals of my Brain, where by your ministry
The Eternal Great Humanity Divine. planted his Paradise,

This is a sardonic reference to the Creation according to the 

Bible.

And in it caus'd the Spectres of the Dead to take sweet forms
In likeness of himself. Tell also of the False Tongue! vegetated
Beneath your land of shadows: of its sacrifices. and its offerings;

By the False Tongue Blake meant among other things the religious

establishment of Britain, especially the mercenary bishops with

the sacrifices and offerings which they extort from the underlings.

even till Jesus, the image of the Invisible God

Became its prey; a curec, an offering, and an atonement,

They were and are responsible for the suffering and death of Jesus

For Death Eternal in the heavens of Albion, & before the Gates
Of Jerusalem his Emanation, in the heavens beneath Beulah        

Say first! what mov'd Milton, who walkd about in Eternity
One hundred years, pondring the intricate mazes of Providence
Unhappy tho in heav'n, he obey'd, he murmur'd not. he was silent
Viewing his Sixfold Emanation scatter'd thro' the deep

Milton was not happy in Heaven because of his guilt feelings re

his former life. So he went back to fix things.

In torment! To go into the deep her to redeem & himself perish?  
What cause at length mov'd Milton to this unexampled deed[?]   t
A Bards prophetic Song! for sitting at eternal tables,
Terrific among the Sons of Albion in chorus solemn & loud
A Bard broke forth! all sat attentive to the awful man.

Mark well my words! they are of your eternal salvation:        

Three Classes are Created by the Hammer of Los, & Woven       

PLATE 3                                                        
By Enitharmons Looms

Time and Space

Milton Plate 15 [17] Erdman 109-10:

First Milton saw Albion upon the Rock of Ages,
Deadly pale outstretchd and snowy cold, storm coverd;
A Giant form of perfect beauty outstretchd on the rock

New York Public Library Milton
Copy C, Plate 38

In solemn death: the Sea of Time & Space thunderd aloud
Against the rock, which was inwrapped with the weeds of death
Hovering over the cold bosom, in its vortex Milton bent down
To the bosom of death, what was underneath soon seemd above.
A cloudy heaven mingled with stormy seas in loudest ruin;
But as a wintry globe descends precipitant thro' Beulah bursting,
With thunders loud and terrible: so Miltons shadow fell
Precipitant loud thundring into the Sea of Time & Space.

wiki-common
Sea of Time and Space

Blake's Myth Again  has a detailed description of the image above.  It's taken from Homer's Cave of the Nymphs.
In Matthew 7:13-14 Jesus spoke of two gates, a wide one that leads to destruction and the narrow one and the narrow one that leads to life.

Visions of God

       According to Blake Ezekiel once acted out a bizarre symptom of the prospects of the Israelites, lying for an inordinate period of time on his left side, then another period on his right. Mr. Blake had a conversatiion with him about that and asked him why he had done it; the answer came clearly: "the desire of raising other [people] into a perception of the infinite" (Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 13)


    Who can doubt that William actually had that interview with Zeke? But if truth be known, that desire became the agenda for Blake's life, and perhaps the generic life purpose of every true prophet.
       He saw things that most of us don't see, and he urgently needed to show them to us, to show us how to see them.

    There are many kinds of seeing and many levels of consciousness, but with the natural proclivity to resort to the dialectic we might say there are two:


       1. The sense-based, natural, materialistic time and space consciousness (Blake called this Ulro; Jesus called it Hell).

       2. 1st Corinthians 13:12:
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

Jesus showed us with his life how to live eternally; and he told us we could do it. Blake did it, periodically at least, and like Jesus he wanted us to share that heavenly gift.
       He called it Vision; that's what he lived for, those eternal moments were all that matters. If you can't do it continuously, then you can talk about it, write about it, draw it, paint it. He did (and you can) show us how to see.

God appears and God is Light 

To those poor Souls who dwell in Night, 
But does a Human Form display 
To those who dwell in Realms of Day.

The Ancient of Days (1794)
Watercolor etching by William Blake

(William Blake, Auguries of Innocence)



This leads to the Ancient of Days: 
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Ancient of Days is a name for God in the Biblical Book of  Daniel: in the original Aramaic Atik Yomin; in the Greek Septuagint Palaios Hemeron; and in the Vulgate Antiquus Dierum.
The title "Ancient of Days" has been used as a source of inspiration in art and music, denoting the Creator's aspects of eternity combined with perfection. William Blake's watercolour and relief etching entitled "The Ancient of Days" is one such example.

Immortal, invisible, God Only Wise      
   

Notes-4

(From Damon, page 386): "the stars symbolize Reason"; they belong to Urizen; in Eternity they were part of Albion, but with the Fall they fled, and formed the Mundane Shell. Blake also provided a redemptive dimension to stars.    Time and Space are creatures like Adam and Eve. Blake tells us that Los created time and Enitharmon space. The magnificent Arlington Tempera is often called the Sea of Time and Space. **************************************       Water symbolizes matter or the material world. In Genesis God moved over the face of the waters. Here it stands for chaos. Creation was made out of chaos, but in Blake's myth water continuously symbolizes the fall from Eternity into materiality. Narciss fell in love with his watery shadow-- and chose it for his life. Albion did the same in his descent from Eternity into the water of material life. ************************************************* Notes on Thel: Har is the place of primeval innocence where Thel lived until her unhappy journey into time and space. (Damon p. 174) (Har has an entirely different meaning in the poem, Tiriel.)       This figure suggests <a name="bar"></a> the Cave of the Nymphs, used by Blake in the Arlington Tempera, a painting portraying man's descent into the Sea of Time and Space (by the "northern bar"). This reference in Thel is an early example of a mythological figure much more extravagantly elaborated at a later date with the painting. (Kathleen Raines' book Blake and Traditiongives a good source for interpretation of the Cave of the Nymphs as used by Blake.) Cave of the Nymphs The northern and southern gates symbolize the descent of human beings from the Eternal into the material via the northern gate and the return to the Eternal via the southern. The Book of Thel amply demonstrates that where "The eternal gates' terrific Porter lifted the northern bar" and Thel, an eternal being "entered the land of sorrows".       Pity meant to Blake (and perhaps for 18th century English) something entirely different from its general current connotation. It was much closer to compassion than it is in our day.    According to the Blake Concordance the word is mentioned 178 times in Blake's Complete Works. But the poem that best defines the meaning that pity had for him is The Divine Image from Songs of Innocence.       In Plate 7 of Blake's Milton we read about the "three classes of mortal men": the elect (self-righteous), the redeemed (saved sinners), and the reprobate (prophets harried from place to place). "Each man is in his Spectre's power until the arrival of that hour when his Humanity awake and cast his Spectre in the lake."    (Jerusalem, plate 37 E184)       Ulro: this material world; also called the 'seat of Satan' as in 'the ruler of this present world".    Tirzah is one of Blake's bad women; for a short poem where Blake vividly describes his use of the word look at To Tirzah. The word unbelief, used by Blake was much like what Jesus railed about, while using the positive mode. Neither of them meant by unbelief failure to adhere to the intellectual propositions which are supposed to define the Christian faith. For both men belief meant commitment to the reality of a loving God. Ulro This world (in the same sense the term is used in the New Testament); also this vale of tears; also the seat of Satan, and a dread sleep (many such usages in 4Z) Urizen The Zoa who represented Reason. In Blake's thought he became closely related to Nobodaddy, the unforgiving and cruel Old Testament God. In 'Milton' Blake describes the contest between the old god, Urizen and 'Milton' (a surrogate here for Christ). It's a vivid description of the humanizing of God that came to us with the words of Jesus, about the loving heavenly father. Vala The original name of the Four Zoas was Vala. In Blake's mythology she was the consort of Luvah (the god of love). Vala represents woman in general; she is also called Tirzah (purely earthly woman) and Jerusalem (heavenly woman).    In Jerusalem, after the Moment of Grace, Blake wrote "The Wheel of Religion". In it he showed once again the difference between false and true Christianity, using almost entirely biblical figures:

Notes-3b

Oothoon
A quick summary of the political import of Visions of the Daughters of Albion came in a letter from Scholar James Rovira:
"I read VDA (only in part) as a critique of US democracy in the light of its violation of democratic ideals (personified by Oothoon) by its legalization of slavery. The forces that would combat slavery are overly passive (Theotormon, God-tormented, conscience in the light of democratic ideals) while the forces of market capitalism that benefit from slavery (Bromion) actively rape/violate these ideals. But, these democratic ideals are still in charge, yet unable to fully give themselves to their ideals, so that the most seriously damaged victim of Bromion's rape was Theotormon, not Oothoon, who is still at least capable of selfless love and who is going to bring forth life."
______________________________________________________________
In All Religions are One Blake defined the poetic genius:

 PRINCIPLE 1:
That the Poetic Genius is the true Man. and that
the body or outward form of Man is derived from
the Poetic Genius. Likewise that the forms of all
things are derived from their Genius. which by the Ancients was call'd an Angel and Spirit and Demon.

PRINCIPLE 2

 As all men are alike in outward form, So (and with the same infinite variety) 

all are alike in the Poetic Genius.

PRINCIPLE 3 

No man can think write or speak
from his heart, but he must intend truth.
Thus all sects of Philosophy are from the Poetic
Genius adapted to the weaknesses of every individual.

PRINCIPLE 4. 

As none by traveling over known
lands can find out the unknown. So from already
acquired knowledge Man could not acquire more;
therefore an universal Poetic Genius exists

PRINCIPLE. 5. 

The Religions of all Nations are derived from each Nations 

different reception of the Poetic Genius which is everywhere 

call'd  the Spirit of Prophecy.

PRINCIPLE 6 

The Jewish and Christian
Testaments are An original derivation from the
Poetic Genius. this is necessary from the confined nature of bodily sensation.

Blake originally ascribed this to Jesus, but then added Urthona and Los 

(the Lord's representatives in his system).
one dies, we say he/she passed away. The question is-- what dies? 

The Roman Empire died; the British Empire died? 

But those were not people per se; they were states, conglomerates of materiality. 

So death is relative-- from what to what? 

Ellie asked a workmate if he considered himself a body or a spirit;
"a body", he said;
"a spirit", she said.

So what dies? A body or a spirit or both? (In mortal life our bodies are said to actually die (cell by cell) and be renewed every 7 years.)

Philippians 1:21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

notes-3a

Oothoon
A quick summary of the political import of Visions of the Daughters of Albion came in a letter from Scholar James Rovira:
"I read VDA (only in part) as a critique of US democracy in the light of its violation of democratic ideals (personified by Oothoon) by its legalization of slavery. The forces that would combat slavery are overly passive (Theotormon, God-tormented, conscience in the light of democratic ideals) while the forces of market capitalism that benefit from slavery (Bromion) actively rape/violate these ideals. But, these democratic ideals are still in charge, yet unable to fully give themselves to their ideals, so that the most seriously damaged victim of Bromion's rape was Theotormon, not Oothoon, who is still at least capable of selfless love and who is going to bring forth life."
______________________________________________________________
In All Religions are One Blake defined the poetic genius:

 PRINCIPLE 1:
That the Poetic Genius is the true Man. and that
the body or outward form of Man is derived from
the Poetic Genius. Likewise that the forms of all
things are derived from their Genius. which by the Ancients was call'd an Angel and Spirit and Demon.

PRINCIPLE 2

 As all men are alike in outward form, So (and with the same infinite variety) 

all are alike in the Poetic Genius.

PRINCIPLE 3 

No man can think write or speak
from his heart, but he must intend truth.
Thus all sects of Philosophy are from the Poetic
Genius adapted to the weaknesses of every individual.

PRINCIPLE 4. 

As none by traveling over known
lands can find out the unknown. So from already
acquired knowledge Man could not acquire more;
therefore an universal Poetic Genius exists

PRINCIPLE. 5. 

The Religions of all Nations are derived from each Nations 

different reception of the Poetic Genius which is everywhere 

call'd  the Spirit of Prophecy.

PRINCIPLE 6 

The Jewish and Christian
Testaments are An original derivation from the
Poetic Genius. this is necessary from the confined nature of bodily sensation.

Blake originally ascribed this to Jesus, but then added Urthona and Los 

(the Lord's representatives in his system).
one dies, we say he/she passed away. The question is-- what dies? 

The Roman Empire died; the British Empire died? 

But those were not people per se; they were states, conglomerates of materiality. 

So death is relative-- from what to what? 

Ellie asked a workmate if he considered himself a body or a spirit;
"a body", he said;
"a spirit", she said.

So what dies? A body or a spirit or both? (In mortal life our bodies are said to actually die (cell by cell) and be renewed every 7 years.)