Literature - William Blake - The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
This is not a theology thread. Shoo!
William Blake - Christian mystic, poet, painter and illuminator - was possibly the most heterodox and iconoclastic Christian the world has known.
According to one exegesis of his bewildering and sprawling mind-myth, he understood Christ to refer to the self-soteriological potentialities of the human mind.
He had a knack for turning doctrinal convention on its head. An astonishing gift possibly most evident in this odd book of proverbs, philosophy and prophetic free verse.
I'd like to start with this excerpt - but feel free to say your piece on Blake and ouevre.
[quote=William Blake - The Marriage of Heaven and Hell]
THE VOICE OF THE DEVIL
All Bibles or sacred codes have been the cause of the following errors:—
1. That man has two real existing principles, viz., a Body and a Soul.
2. That Energy, called Evil, is alone from the Body; and that Reason, called 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 called Body is a portion of Soul discerned 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.
Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place and governs the unwilling.
And being restrained, it by degrees becomes passive, till it is only the shadow of desire.
The history of this is written in Paradise Lost, and the Governor or Reason is called Messiah.
And the original Archangel or possessor of the command of the heavenly host is called the Devil, or Satan, and his children are called Sin and Death.
But in the book of Job, Milton’s Messiah is called Satan.
For this history has been adopted by both parties.
It indeed appeared to Reason as if desire was cast out, but the Devil’s account is, that the Messiah fell, and formed a heaven of what he stole from the abyss.
This is shown in the Gospel, where he prays to the Father to send the Comforter or desire that Reason may have ideas to build on, the Jehovah of the Bible being no other than he who dwells in flaming fire. Know that after Christ’s death he became Jehovah.
But in Milton, the Father is Destiny, the Son a ratio of the five senses, and the Holy Ghost vacuum!
Note.—The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet, and of the Devil’s party without knowing it.[/quote]
William Blake - Christian mystic, poet, painter and illuminator - was possibly the most heterodox and iconoclastic Christian the world has known.
According to one exegesis of his bewildering and sprawling mind-myth, he understood Christ to refer to the self-soteriological potentialities of the human mind.
He had a knack for turning doctrinal convention on its head. An astonishing gift possibly most evident in this odd book of proverbs, philosophy and prophetic free verse.
I'd like to start with this excerpt - but feel free to say your piece on Blake and ouevre.
[quote=William Blake - The Marriage of Heaven and Hell]
THE VOICE OF THE DEVIL
All Bibles or sacred codes have been the cause of the following errors:—
1. That man has two real existing principles, viz., a Body and a Soul.
2. That Energy, called Evil, is alone from the Body; and that Reason, called 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 called Body is a portion of Soul discerned 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.
Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place and governs the unwilling.
And being restrained, it by degrees becomes passive, till it is only the shadow of desire.
The history of this is written in Paradise Lost, and the Governor or Reason is called Messiah.
And the original Archangel or possessor of the command of the heavenly host is called the Devil, or Satan, and his children are called Sin and Death.
But in the book of Job, Milton’s Messiah is called Satan.
For this history has been adopted by both parties.
It indeed appeared to Reason as if desire was cast out, but the Devil’s account is, that the Messiah fell, and formed a heaven of what he stole from the abyss.
This is shown in the Gospel, where he prays to the Father to send the Comforter or desire that Reason may have ideas to build on, the Jehovah of the Bible being no other than he who dwells in flaming fire. Know that after Christ’s death he became Jehovah.
But in Milton, the Father is Destiny, the Son a ratio of the five senses, and the Holy Ghost vacuum!
Note.—The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet, and of the Devil’s party without knowing it.[/quote]
Comments (31)
Means either: you must gratify your desires regardless of the harm you cause to other people.
Or: kill off your evil desires and do not encourage them, however attached you are to them.
My guess is that he intended to cause profound discomfort with this saying. We are left unable to agree or to disagree with it. We are left with an image of a baby that we have somehow been persuaded to strangle for a moral reason that we cannot clearly state. Disturbing and disturbed.
I have loved 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell' since I discovered it at age 16. It is fairly difficult to interpret, and part of it comes down to the influence of the visionary, Emmanuel Swedenborg, who influenced Blake so much.
As far as the 'voice of the devil', it seems that Blake is criticising the idea of perfection as a goal within Christianity, especially in the form of asceticism. There are some parallels between Blake's approach to this with Carl Jung in 'Answer to Job'. Jung points to the way in which Christianity tends to suggest the need to suppress and repress sexual desires.
Blake's philosophy is extremely interesting one in the way it came at a time when most people believed in the metaphysical reality of God and the devil. It is a contrast to the approach of Milton, even though Blake suggests that Milton was 'part of the devil's party without knowing it.' When I first read the passage it did trouble me because I was a practicing Catholic at the time and I thought that I was probably part of the 'devil's party because I was better at expression of the demonic side too.
It is important to note that Blake sees a duality of the soul and the body. Of course, it is rare to use the concept of the soul, and are more likely to use the term mind or self. I find the idea of 'Energy is eternal delight' inspirational and many others have done so too. Blake was an artist and poet who was radical for his time. He was also rather eccentric and a visionary. If he were alive today he would have probably been Sectioned for treatment in a psychiatric hospital and, quite likely, he would not have written and created the work for which he is known and loved by so many.
Did you not mean rejects rather than sees a duality of soul and body? Your last sentence here is way too baselessly speculative for my taste.
Quoting Jack Cummins
I'm not sure if this is what yo are alluding to but, if so. yes, Blake seemed to have believed that deities found their life in the human imagination:
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 pronounced that the Gods had orderd such things. Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast. (My bold)
From 'The Marraige of Heaven and Hell' William Blake The Complete Poems Kindle Edition
I would have to go back and look at Blake's writings because I have not read them for such a long time, before I began reading that much philosophy. You are probably right to say that he rejects the duality of mind and body. His emphasis on imagination was important too and this may be one big contribution he made to philosophy. It is also useful to read about Blake's ideas and the one writer who I have come across is Kathleen Raine.
I am impressed by someone starting a thread on the philosophy of William Blake, especially as the philosophy of religion and of science gets so much attention. Literature is important too as an aspect for philosophical exploration, especially such a distinct voice (and visionary) as Blake.
Quoting Janus
Indeed, to Blake's lights, "the Human Imagination" is precisely "the Bosom of God."
[quote=William Blake - Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion]I rest not from my great task! To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought: into Eternity Ever expanding in the Bosom of God. the Human Imagination[/quote]
Nice! I love Blake, and have done since my mid teens!
They anthologize the Songs of Innocence and Experience and other beautiful but harmless tidbits - but they wouldn't dare expose the budding mind to Vala or Jerusalem. As mind-blowing as mystic lit gets.
P.S.
[quote=William Blake - Vala, Night the Ninth]
Let the inchaind soul shut up in darkness & in sighing
Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years
Rise & look out his chains are loose his dungeon doors are open
And let his wife & children return from the opressors scourge
They look behind at every step & believe it is a dream
Are these the Slaves that groand along the streets of Mystery
Where are your bonds & task masters are these the prisoners
Where are your chains where are your tears why do you look around
If you are thirsty there is the river go bathe your parched limbs
The good of all the Land is before you for Mystery is no more[/quote]
Quoting Cuthbert
As the apostles are fond of saying: This is a difficult teaching.
There's plenty of the shock-jock reactionary in Blake - as in Isaiah and pals. An anti-reason, anti-Industrial Revolution crusader.
Blake was, to my view, and as the father of the Romantics - and loather of the budding supremacy of reason - an evangelist of desire. What evidence do you see for the second (meeker and milder) interpretation?
That said, the mind, prima facie, appears to be going off in a different direction than the body. Asceticism, an extremum case, is when our minds outright reject and neglect the body, the physical as unclean, corrupted, and inferior.
However, there's the possibility that the animosity, the conflict, the antagonistic relationship betwixt mind and body is merely an illusion and/or indicates our ignorance/misunderstanding. Putting the mind on a pedestal and relegating the body to a lower position is, to my reckoning, a mistake. There's a lot we can learn from our bodies - it's been, in a sense, honed to near perfection by evolution and when your body says it wants (say) sugar, you better pay attention, it wants it for a very good reason. That is to say, the body thinks without actually thinking!
Quoting Cuthbert
That's really interesting, I never though of that proverb meaning either of those, although I can see why you do. For me it's a statement of psychology, which might be translated as:
"Nursing unacted desires breeds a kind of pestilential soul that, long term, en masse, causes far more harm and creates the conditions whereby people kill babies in cradles. If we live simply and honestly, expressing openly our desires, even if it involves clashes and unpleasantness, it is fundamentally healthy way to live. When we keep our desires secret and nurture them without allowing their expression they can madden us, creating the conditions of abominable actions."
Something like that anyway. The way I've put it there is very consequentialist, but you could make a similar interpretation focusing on the health of a soul or moral virtue or something.
I find this a very interesting one. I interpret this as "You only start to think when you meet an obstacle to your expansion."
It is perhaps the idea that we are primarily appetival, gratification-seeking, acquisitive of power and matter. We expand our circle of influence until we meet an obstacle of some kind, as we inevitably do - we meet another centre of appetite doing the same thing as us, or we encounter a paradox that must be solved, e.g. too many cakes reduces your ability to acquire more cakes, etc, we start to think "Oh! Something has gone wrong. What is it? What is the shape of this obstacle? Can I go around it? Can I destroy it? To do that I need to know its construction." etc. A philosopher/scientist is born from a hedonist. We are all frustrated hedonists on this forum, no?
Perhaps hedonist is the wrong word. Perhaps primary appetite does not distinguish pleasure from pain straight away.
Quoting Agent Smith
For Blake there is no body apart from the Soul or Imagination, and the wisdom of the body is pre-rational, although I don't think he would use those terms. It is not a dualism of mind and body that Blake speaks of, but a duality of visions within the imagination: heaven (reason) and hell (the passions). Traditionally wisdom was seen as the ruling of the passions by reason; Blake presents a different vision as portrayed in his well known aphorism "If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise".
:snicker:
From a Darwinian standpoint, the passions are not devoid of reason; as I said, there are very good reasons why one loses one's temper, or falls head over heels in love, feels jealous rage, experiences the blues, is on cloud nine, etc. That is to say emotions are rational; the problem, if it is one (I'm beginning to have doubts), is that feelings can override reason and then all hell breaks loose. Thus, in my humble opinion, do feel/emote, but don't let your feelings get the better of you(r reason). Xin (heart-mind).
As to lineage I see something like: Isaiah (and friends) to Milton to Swedenborg to Blake.
Probably a few names between Isaiah and Milton - but if I remember correctly, Blake really only read the Bible, Milton and Swedenborg.
This phrase kills me. What a wit. :lol:
[quote=Ibid]
PROVERBS OF HELL
In seed-time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plough over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.
The cut worm forgives the plough.
Dip him in the river who loves water.
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
He whose face gives no light shall never become a star.
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
The hours of folly are measured by the clock, but of wisdom no clock can measure.
All wholesome food is caught without a net or a trap.
Bring out number, weight, and measure in a year of dearth.
No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.
A dead body revenges not injuries.
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise. [/quote]
Blake as reactionary against the budding ascendancy of reason is here on full display.
Spot on to my lights.
True that!
Bunyan? Rabelais? Shall I stop naming people with idiosyncratic and prophetic imaginations and then putting a question mark after each name? Or not? I might be able to think of a couple more.
By all means continue. It might remind me of some wordsmith thoughtsmith genius drowned in my personal noetic chaos. :smile:
A violently irreverent attitude toward the past. The slogan of the fearless iconoclast or innovator.
An anti-puritanical revision of wisdom.
Affirming the power of Mind to color or transform our experience of objects.
A life-affirmative statement suggesting loving acceptance, by the eternal, of the Tao's ten thousand things.
A nirvana-is-samsara sentiment.
This brings to mind what might be called the wisdom of the flow state.
The hallmark of the flow state is a diminished sense of time.
A morsel of traditional Christian altruism.
A few decades ago I learned from two Latter Day Saints missionaries that their church’s doctrine teaches that the biblical ‘lake of fire’ meant for the truly wicked actually represents an eternal spiritual burning of guilt over one’s corporeal misdeeds. I concluded, accordingly, that upon an atrocity-committing monster’s physical death, not only would he (or she) be 100 percent liberated from the anger and hate that blighted his physical life; also, his spirit or consciousness would be forced to exist with the presumably unwanted awareness of the mindbogglingly immense amount of needless suffering he personally had caused.
The human soul may be inherently good, on its own; however, trapped within the physical body, notably the corruptible brain, oftentimes the soul’s purity may not be able to shine through. While the heart may be what keeps the soul grounded in this physical world, I believe that it is the brain and any structural or chemical-imbalance flaws within that, unfortunately, essentially defines one’s character/behavior while the soul is confined within the bodily form.
It may be the case that the worst mass-atrocity-committing people throughout history had been thoroughly corrupted by a seriously flawed cerebral structure thus mind (or state of mind). Though, admittedly, that would likely be, even if true, no consolation to their countless brutalized victims.