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Abarim Abel Aberdeen The Abomination of Desolation Abraham An Abstraction Achitophel Adam Adamah The Adona Africa Agag Agrippa Ahania Aholiab Air Al-Ulro Albion All Religions are one Alla Allamanda Allegory Allen The Almighty The Alps Amalek Amazonia America Ammon Amsterdam Anana Ananton Angel Anglesea Annandale Antamon The Antediluvians The Antichtrist Antrim Anytus Apollo Apollyon The Appenines Apuleus Arabia Aram Ararat Araunah The Archiereus Architecture Argyll Ariston Aristotle The Ark of Noah The Ark of the Covennt Armagh The Arnon Arphaxad Art Artery Arthur Asaph Asher Ashtaroth Ashur Asia Assyria The Asylum AtlanticHills The Atlantic Atlas Ayr

ABARIM is a mountain range east of the Dead Sea. From Mount Abarim, Moses beheld the Promised Land (Numb xxvii:12).

It is one of the six mountains surrounding Palestine which are equated with Milton’s Sixfold Emanation, his three wives and his three daughters (Mil 17:16).

ABEL, the second child of Adam and Eve, was killed by his brother Cain.

Blake was not interested in the victim of this first of murders, but he was very much interested in the result: the desire for vengeance on the criminal, which became the lex talionis, “life for life” (Exod xxi:23), a law abrogated by the Forgiveness of Sins. This voice of Abel’s blood crying to the Lord (Gen iv:10) Blake personified as the “ghost of Abel,” which Eve instantly recognized as not the real Abel at all (GhA 13), who she perceives is still living, though terribly afflicted. Therefore, in A Vision of the Last Judgment (K 606), “Abel kneels on a bloody cloud descriptive of those Churches before the flood, that they were fill’d with blood & fire & vapour of smoke.” See Illustrations.

In the painting illustrating Hervey’s Meditations Among the Tombs (see Illustrations), both Abel and Cain flee from the Serpent, as though Adam and Eve’s division of things into Good and Evil were carried out in their progeny.

ABERDEEN is a county of Scotland which, with Berwick and Dumfries, is assigned to Judah (J 16:54). With the rest of Scotland it is assigned to Bowen (J 71:46).

The ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION is a mysterious apocalyptic phrase used by Daniel (ix:27; xi:31; xii:11), and quoted by Jesus: “But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains” (Mark xiii:14; Matt xxiv:15–16).

“This is the Spectre of Man, the Holy Reasoning Power, and in its Holiness is closed the Abomination of Desolation” (J 10:15). It is also “State Religion, which is the source of all Cruelty” (On Watson, K 393). It is the enemy of Holy Generation, birthplace of the Lamb (J 7:70). But it is also the flesh: “These are the Sexual Garments, the Abomination of Desolation, hiding the Human Lineaments as with an Ark & Curtains, which Jesus rent & now shall wholly purge away with Fire till Generation is swallow’d up in Regeneration” (Mil 41:25).

ABRAHAM (Abram), the great patriarch, was born in Ur, a city of Chaldea. Under divine command, he fled with his family from the idolaters to Canaan, where God promised him that he should be father to a great nation, and changed his name from Abram (“father of elevation”) to Abraham (“father of multitudes”).

According to Blake, Abraham was born into that primitive religion of human sacrifice which Blake called Druidism (J 27). He fled from Chaldea “in fire” of inspiration (SoL 3:16), “shaking his goary locks” (J 15:28). Evidently his locks became “goary” from the human sacrifices of Chaldea, and were not a reminiscence of Banquo’s ghost. To Blake, his flight meant his renunciation of such sacrifices (as exemplified by his substitution of a ram for Isaac), which started a new era in religion. “Abraham was called to succeed the Druidical age, which began to turn allegoric and mental signification into corporeal command, whereby human sacrifice would have depopulated the earth” (DesC V, K 578). Even until his time the “blood & fire & vapour of smoke” of the earlier churches were not extinguished (LJ, K 606). Thus in the cycle of the Twenty-seven Churches, Abraham is the twenty-first, and the first of the last septenary, “the Male Females” of Moral Virtue (Mil 37:41; J 75:16). Los created him as one of the prophets to offset the Satanic kings (J 73:41). His children were the Hebrew Church (LJ, K 610), and he himself was an ancestor of Jesus (J 27). Reuben, however, “enroots his brethren in the narrow Canaanite” (the merchants) “from the Limit Noah to the Limit Abram” (the preceding cycle of the Twenty-seven Churches); but in Abram’s loins, “Reuben in his Twelve-fold majesty & beauty shall take refuge as Abraham flees from Chaldea” (J 15:25–28). Jerusalem, Plate 15, depicts the flight of Abram from Chaldea, opposed by the vegetated Reuben.

An ABSTRACTION is a generalization based on reality, but which when substituted for reality becomes hostile to humanity. In Blake’s writings, “abstract” usually can be translated “non-human.” It is “opposed to the Visions of Imagination” (J 74:26). Orthodox religion is such an abstraction. Priesthood “enslav’d the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects” (MHH 11). The parson with his “nets & gins & traps” surrounds the farmer “with cold floods of abstraction, and with forests of solitude” in order to take his money and build “castles and high spires, where kings & priests may dwell” (VDA 5:18).” And this is the manner of the Sons of Albion in their strength: they take the Two Contraries which are call’d Qualities, with which every Substance is clothed: they name them Good & Evil; from them they make an Abstract, which is a Negation not only of the Substance from which it is derived, a murderer of its own Body, but also a murderer of every Divine Member: it is the Reasoning Power, an Abstract objecting power that Negatives every thing. This is the Spectre of Man, the Holy Reasoning Power, and in its Holiness is closed the Abomination of Desolation” (J 10:7). As abstractions are the invention of logic, Urizen is the great abstracter. At the very beginning he is “unknown, abstracted” (Ur 3:6), and at the end, Albion bids him “come forth from slumbers of thy cold abstraction” (FZ ix:129). Fuzon, in denouncing Urizen, calls him “this abstract nonentity” (Ahan 2:11). “The Human Abstract” (SoE) describes the origin and growth of his Tree of Mystery. When Orc begins to reptilize under Urizen’s influence, he turns “affection into fury, & thought into abstraction” (FZ vii:155). Blake learned early from Lavater (K 86) that “all abstraction is temporary folly”; and he complained later to Butts (11 Sept 1801) that “my Abstract folly hurries me often away while I am at work, carrying me over Mountains & Valleys, which are not Real, in a Land of Abstraction where Spectres of the Dead wander.”

ACHITOPHEL (“Ahithophel” in the King James Version) was the wise counsellor of King David. However, he conspired against him with Absalom, and when he knew that the conspiracy had failed, he hanged himself (II Sam xvii:23). Blake ranked him with Caiaphas, Pilate, and Judas: “Achitophel is also here with the cord in his hand” (LJ, K 608).

ADAH, a Cainite, was one of the two wives of Lamech, the first polygamist (Gen iv:19). Blake listed her as the eleventh daughter of Los and Enitharmon, in the line from Ocalythron to Mary (FZ viii:365). In the revised list of the Maternal Line, she is a daughter of Vala, second in the line from Cainah to Mary (J 62:9).

ADAM (“red earth”) was the first human being. His creation was a comparatively late episode in the general fall of man (Albion). “Satan & Adam & the whole World was Created by the Elohim” in Albion’s “Chaotic State of Sleep” (J 27). In Blake’s day, the first two chapters of Genesis were read as a consecutive tale, not as two independent accounts of the same event. Consequently, there were two stages of Adam’s creation: the first, when he was made in the image of God (Gen i:27); the second, when he was made of the dust (Gen ii:7). Later, the Lord was to repent “that he had made Adam (of the Female, the Adamah) & it grieved him at his heart” (Laoc, K 776—revised from Gen vi:6; see ADAMAH). Adam originally contained both sexes. Blake confused Crabb Robinson on this point by talking of “a union of sexes in man as in Ovid, an androgynous state” (CR 263, 296). This theory, which Blake might have got from Plato, seemed indicated by the text “And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Gen i:27). The sexes were not separated until the creation of Eve, when Adam was “divided into Male and Female” (Blake’s MS. Genesis, Chap. ii; Damon 221). But it was Jesus himself who divided the sexes in creating Eve (J 35 [31], illustr.) that “Himself may in process of time be born Man to redeem” (J 42:34). Blake made much of the statement that the Elohim was the creator of Adam, for he was not the supreme Jehovah (CR 298), but was only the third Eye of God. See ELOHIM. “[The Eternals] sent Elohim, who created Adam to die for Satan. Adam refus’d, but was compell’d to die by Satan’s arts” (FZ viii:401). But first the merciful Jesus fixed two limits to the Fall. “The Divine hand found the Two Limits, first of Opacity, then of Contraction. Opacity was named Satan, Contraction was named Adam” (Mil 13:20). This event took place between the failure of the second Eye and before the coming of the third. Jesus found these two limits in Albion’s bosom “while yet those two beings were not born nor knew of good or Evil” (FZ iv:271–74). They are to be found in every individual man (J 42:30; see also J 35:1; 73:28). On the Laocoön plate, Satan and Adam are the two sons of Yod, “the Angel of the Divine Presence” (K 775). Adam is thus the younger brother of Satan. Their relationship is shown most clearly in the illustration on Milton 33. The “Mundane Egg” (Mil 25:42) is superimposed on the four flaming Zoas, and is divided into two parts. The lower part, labelled “Satan,” is mostly in the sphere of Urizen; the infernal flames reach into the upper part, labelled “Adam.” Thus Adam is the conscious mind and Satan the subconscious, the source of Energy. See MUNDANE EGG. As the two sons of Laocoön, they are entwined with the serpents of Good and Evil, which also are killing their father. Adam struggles with the serpent labelled “Good”; and the name of his first wife, Lilith, is written there. See LILITH. Adam and Eve remained in the state of Innocence until the Serpent persuaded Eve to eat the fruit of the forbidden Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, promising her that “ye shall be as gods [Elohim—judges], knowing good and evil” (Gen iii:5). The Original Sin therefore was judging others by moral values. After she had persuaded Adam to eat also, they were instantly ashamed of their nakedness. Shame was the first sign of Experience; the second was hiding from God. Their first two children exhibited their error, for Cain was evil and Abel was good. The evil slew the good. For Adam, who contained all the souls of future mankind, according to rabbinical tradition, contained warring elements: he is “Peleg [‘division’] & Joktan [‘who is made small,’ his brother], & Esau & Jacob, & Saul & David” (J 73:28). The fallen Adam “is only The Natural Man & not the Soul or Imagination” (Laoc, K 776; Damon 221); he is Rousseau’s Natural Man. He is also the conscious part of the mind. As the Limit of Contraction, he is the lowest point to which man can shrink. In the illustration to Young’s Night Thoughts, “Sense and Reason Shew the Door” (iv:136), Blake followed Milton in representing Reason as Adam and Sense as Eve; but he contradicted Young by having them point upwards as well as down, and the door is Gothic, with angels for archivolts. “Satan & Adam are States Created into Twenty-seven Churches” ( Mil 32:25). None of these is named for Satan: as Error he includes them all. Adam leads the cycle, being the first of the nine from Adam to Lamech (the father of Noah, who begins the second group). These nine were mighty giants (having lived before the Flood); they were “hermaphroditic,” being self-contradictory and unsynthesized (Mil 37:36; J 13:32; 75:11). “And where Luther ends Adam begins again in Eternal Circle” (J 75:24). These churches before the Flood were “fill’d with blood & fire & vapour of smoke; even till Abraham’s time the vapor & heat was not extinguish’d; these States Exist now” (LJ, K 606). Adam is the nineteenth son of Los and Enitharmon (FZ viii:360); he is preceded by Satan (error), Har (self-love), Ochim (woes), and Ijim (animal lusts). He is the first of the prophets created by Los, to offset the line of kings created by Satan (J 73: 41). He is reduced to a skeleton by the laws of Urizen, while Noah, the man of vision with whom he is contrasted, becomes leprous (SoL 3:6, 10; 7:20). He is equated with Scofield (J 7:25, 42); Hand and Scofield in their innocence were united as one man, Adam (J 60:16). In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake prophesied Adam’s return into Paradise (MHH 3). The CAVE OF ADAM, obviously meaning the skull, is the place where Reuben sleeps while his senses are being limited (J 36:5). But Blake may also have intended to refer to “the city Adam” (Adamah), which was beside Zaretan, approximately half way between that city and Succoth (Josh iii: 16).

ADAMAH is a feminine noun meaning “earth,” used in Genesis vi:6: “And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.” Blake retranslated this passage: “He repented that he had made Adam (of the Female, the Adamah) & it grieved him at his heart” (Laoc, K 776). In other words, the creator of man (the Elohim) repented that he had made man with a mortal body, the mortal body being given by the female.

The ADONA is a river beside which Thel laments (Thel 1:4). The name was suggested by the river Adonis, where the Syrian damsels lamented in amorous ditties the annual wounding of Thammuz (PL i:450).

AFRICA is the first in the clockwise cycle of the four continents. It is the state of slavery, historically illustrated by Pharaoh’s oppression of the Israelites. See EGYPT. The name “Africa” does not occur in the Bible; Blake’s statement that its name was originally Egypt (Ur 28:10) would signify that the Egyptian bondage typified all slavery. According to The Book of Urizen civilization originated in Africa. Being in the south, it is under Urizen, whose Net of Religion shrank and materialized its inhabitants. “Six days they shrunk up from existence, and on the seventh day they rested, and they bless’d the seventh day, in sick hope, and forgot their eternal life. And their thirty cities divided in form of a human heart. . . . They lived a period of years; then left a noisom body to the jaws of devouring darkness. And their children wept, & built tombs [the pyramids] in the desolate places, and form’d laws of prudence, and call’d them the eternal laws of God. . . . Perswasion was in vain; for the ears of the inhabitants were wither’d & deafen’d & cold, and their eyes could not discern their brethren of other cities” (25:39; 28:1–18). “Africa” is the first of the two sections of The Song of Los. “He sung it to four harps at the tables of Eternity. In heart-formed Africa Urizen faded! Ariston shudder’d!” (3:2). The song tells of the enslavement of man by Urizen’s laws and religions promulgated by the prophets, “the children of Los.” “Black grew the sunny African when Rintrah gave Abstract Philosophy to Brama in the East” (3:10). A résumé of the other religions follows. “Thus the terrible race of Los & Enitharmon gave Laws & Religions to the sons of Har [self-love], binding them more and more to Earth, closing and restraining, till a Philosophy of Five Senses was complete. Urizen wept & gave it into the hands of Newton & Locke” (4:13). Error is now complete, and Revolution is imminent. “Clouds roll heavy upon the Alps round Rousseau & Voltaire . . . The Guardian Prince of Albion burns in his nightly tent” (4:18, 21). This last line is repeated as the first of the narrative of America, which continues the tale and the cycle. A reference to the revolt of the Surinam slaves, described in J. G. Stedman’s Narrative (1793), appears in Jerusalem (45:19): “When Africa in sleep rose in the night of Beulah and bound down the Sun & Moon, his friends cut his strong chains & overwhelm’d his dark machines in fury & destruction, and the Man reviving repented: he wept before his wrathful brethren, thankful & considerate for their well timed wrath.” AGAG was the king of the Amalekites. Samuel ordered Saul to exterminate them all, with their possessions. Saul, however, spared King Agag and the best of the booty. Samuel denounced Saul and hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal (I Sam xv). The Spectre constricts “into Druid Rocks round Canaan, Agag & Aram & Phar[a]oh” (J 54:26). AGRIPPA von Nettesheim (Heinrich Cornelius, 1486–1535) was one of the brilliant men of his generation. He was secretary to Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, who sent him to Paris on a diplomatic mission in 1506, and again in 1510 to England, where he was the guest of Dean Colet. Later he was archivist and historiographer to the Emperor Charles V. He was also physician to the mother of Francis I. As a theologian he attended the council of Pisa in 1511. He was in trouble with the Church three times. In 1509 he was obliged to resign his lectureship at the University of Dole because of his lectures on Reuchlin’s De verbo mirifice; in 1515, he was forced from the University of Pavia for his lectures on the Divine Pimander of Hermes Trismegistus; and in 1518 he was forced to resign as syndic at Metz because he persistently defended a woman accused of witchcraft. The Inquisition prevented the publication of his De occulta philosophia (1510), which he wrote probably under the influence of his friend the Abbot John Trithemius; but it finally was printed at Antwerp in 1531. It was a system of world philosophy, a synthesis of Christianity, Platonism, and Kabbalism, in which he defended magic as a means for understanding God and Nature. It gave him his popular reputation of being a magician. His De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum et artium (written 1527, pub. 1531) was a satire in which he renounced all the occult arts except alchemy. Blake in his early days, when searching for significant names for his characters, took “Tiriel” and “Zazel” from the tables of the planets in the Occult Philosophy II, xxii. The mysterious “Mne Seraphim” in the first line of The Book of Thel was apparently an alteration, in the interest of gender, of “Bne Seraphim” (“Sons of the Seraphim,” the intelligencies of Venus) which occurs in the same tables. AHANIA, or Pleasure, is the Emanation of Urizen. The division of the two is caused by the fact that Urizen, the Abstract Philosopher, has yet to learn “that Enjoyment & not Abstinence is the food of Intellect” (To Cumberland, 6 Dec 1795). The original tale of their division and her casting out is told in The Book of Ahania (1795). Once she had rejoiced when Urizen returned in the evening, the sweat pouring from his temples, after his sowing the seed of eternal science in the human soul (5:28–36); but when Fuzon’s globe of wrath divided Urizen’s loins, she became a separate being (2:32). Urizen named her “Sin” and jealously hid her in darkness, where she became a faint shadow, the “mother of Pestilence” (2:43). The poem ends with her splendid lament. Blake suppressed The Book of Ahania and recast her tale in The Four Zoas (ii; iii; ix). She is Urizen’s “Shadowy Feminine Semblance” (ii:181). They have twelve sons (ii:173, 199), who are the signs of the Zodiac, and three daughters (ii:175, 189), who are the Head, Heart, and Loins (see URIZEN’S DAUGHTERS). But Urizen resents Ahania’s influence and does not take her to the nuptial feast of Los and Enitharmon; consequently, “Urizen with faded radiance sigh’d, forgetful of the flowing wine and of Ahania, his Pure Bride; but she was distant far” (i:436). When he is away, “Trembling, cold, in paling fears she sat, a shadow of Despair; therefore toward the West, Urizen form’d a recess in the wall for fires to glow upon the pale Female’s limbs in his absence” (ii:186). When he does return, “Astonish’d & Confounded he beheld her shadowy form now separate . . . Two wills they had, two intellects, & not as in times of old” (ii:203, 206). To divide them further, Los and Enitharmon contrive to let Ahania hear Enion’s lament and see her “Spectrous form . . . in the Void, and never from that moment could she rest upon her pillow” (ii:287–90, 383–84, 419, 423–24). Distressed at Urizen’s gloom, Ahania pleads with him: “Why wilt thou look upon futurity, dark’ning present joy?” (iii:11); he replies that he fears the birth of Orc, “ & that Prophetic boy must grow up to command his Prince” (iii:18). Ahania tells him to leave the future to the Eternal One, and recounts her vision of the Darkening Man worshipping his own shadow, and of the smiting of man by Luvah (iii:27–104). Urizen in fury casts her out. “Shall the feminine indolent bliss, the indulgent self of weariness, the passive idle sleep, the enormous night & darkness of Death set herself up to give her laws to the active masculine virtue? Thou little diminutive portion that dar’st be a counterpart [Emanation], thy passivity, thy laws of obedience & insincerity are my abhorrence. Wherefore hast thou taken that fair form? Whence is this power given to thee? Once thou wast in my breast a sluggish current of dim waters on whose verdant margin a cavern shagg’d with horrid shades, dark, cool & deadly, where I laid my head in the hot noon after the broken clods had wearied me; there I laid my plow, & there my horses fed: and thou hast risen with thy moist locks into a wat’ry image reflecting all my indolence, my weakness & my death, to weigh me down beneath the grave into non Entity” (iii:114). She falls “into the Caverns of the Grave & places of Human Seed where the impressions of Despair & Hope enroot for ever” (iii:142); there she wanders lamenting. Tharmas flees from her voice while she, with her eyes towards Urizen, bewails the state of the fallen Man (viii:487–532). But at the Last Judgment, once Urizen gives up his attempt to control the other Zoas and the future, he is instantly restored to his pristine glory, and Ahania returns, only to die of joy, for Urizen’s work is not yet done. He is to plow in the winter; then she shall awake every spring (ix:179–219). After the plowing, she rises like the harvest moon, and takes her place by Urizen at the feast(ix:344–53). When the Harvest and Vintage are done, she and the other three Emanations leave the feast and go to their looms. Other references in The Four Zoas: Enitharmon deceives Los by assuming Ahania’s form, then blames him for embracing her (ii:324, 328); Vala tells Tharmas that Enitharmon, Ahania, and Enion have hidden Luvah in the form of Orc (vii b:248). In Milton 19:41, Ahania, rent apart into a desolate night, laments. I n Jerusalem 14:10–12, Los sees the four Emanations; Ahania, Enion, and Vala (but not Enitharmon) are described as three evanescent shades. AHOLIAB and Bezaleel were divinely appointed to build the Ark, the Mercy Seat, the Tabernacle, and its furniture (Exod xxxi:1–11). The two are mentioned in “If it is True what the Prophets write” (K 543), as real artists whose works are preferable to the Roman and Greek gods. AIR, one of the four Elements, is assigned to Urizen. It is materialized as Urizen’s son Thiriel, the first to appear, “astonish’d at his own existence, like a man from a cloud born” (Ur 23:12). Once Blake seems to touch upon the occult theory, which he could have found in Agrippa or Paracelsus, that nothing is ever lost but is preserved in the Air. “Hast thou forgot that the air listens thro’ all its districts, telling the subtlest thoughts shut up from light in chambers of the Moon?” (FZ vii b:242). Even the subtlest thoughts of love are preserved. AL-ULRO is the third state of humanity in its repose. It is situated in the loins and seminal vessels (Mil 34:12, 15). The first state is Beulah (head), the second is Alla (heart), the third is Al-Ulro, and the fourth is Or-Ulro (the digestive tract). Blake mentions this set of states only this one time. ALBION is a common poetical name for England. When the Trojans land on the rocky shore of Albion, they call it “mother” (PS, King Edward the Third vi:14). Thereafter, through the minor prophecies, Blake used “Albion” simply as the name for England, without reference to gender. About 1793, he added a couple of lines to his engraving, the so-called “Glad Day,” in which he gave the name of Albion to the dancing youth who symbolizes the politically awakened England. See ALBION’S DANCE, below. Eventually Blake learned that “Albion” was the name of the aboriginal giant who conquered the island and renamed it for himself. Neither Geoffrey of Monmouth nor Milton mentions him, but Holinshed does (Chronicles, 1577), confusing the classical Albion (a son of Neptune who was killed by Hercules) with the local giant, who was killed by Brut. Camden (Britannia, 1586) refers to him, and Camden’s admirer Spenser devoted a couple of stanzas to him (FQ II.x.11; IV.xi.15–16). Meanwhile Blake had come to believe that fallen Man is sleeping with his “faded head” laid down “on the rock of eternity, where the eternal lion and eagle remain to devour” (FR 96). In The Four Zoas he gave the name Albion to the hitherto nameless “Eternal Man” or “Fallen Man” (FZ i:477, 485, etc.). Albion is the father of all mankind (FZ ii:43). “He is Albion, our Ancestor, patriarch of the Atlantic Continent, whose History Preceded that of the Hebrews & in whose Sleep, or Chaos, Creation began” (LJ, K 609; DesC V, K 578, where he is identified with Atlas). But nothing of his history came from the legends of Holinshed and the others. He corresponds instead to Swedenborg’s Grand Man and the Adam Kadmon of the Kabbalists. Albion’s wife is Brittannia (LJ, K 609; J 94:20, 26). When the Zoas changed their situations in the Universal Man, Brittannia “divided into Jerusalem & Vala” ( J 36:28). Jerusalem is called the daughter of the two (LJ, K 609), but she is usually known as Albion’s Emanation ( J t.p.). Jesus took her as his bride, giving Vala to Albion as his bride ( J 20:40; 63:7; 64:19; 65:71). This allocation of Emanations indicates the close bonds between God and Man. But the jealous Albion hid Jerusalem from the Saviour (J 4:33) and turned his back on the Divine Vision (FZ i:290, 558; ii:2; J 4:22, etc.), sinking into his deadly sleep. This loss of the Divine Vision had terrible consequences. Albion’s Emotions (Luvah) usurped the place of his Reason (Urizen) when those two Zoas were fighting over Albion’s body sleeping in the holy tent (FZ i:484–544). Urizen left Luvah to pour his fury on Albion (FZ i:540). Luvah did this when Albion worshipped the “Shadow from his wearied intellect” (FZ iii:50). Luvah smote him with boils (FZ iii:82), whereupon Albion dismissed him, limiting his senses (iii:83). Albion’s sleep is also a wandering (FZ i:478; v:221). “Now Man was come to the Palm tree & the Oak of Weeping which stand upon the edge of Beulah, & he sunk down from the supporting arms of the Eternal Saviour, who dispos’d the pale limbs of his Eternal Individuality upon the Rock of Ages, Watching over him with Love & Care” (FZ i:464). See ROCK OF AGES. Here Albion remains until the Last Judgment. Meanwhile Jesus (the Divine Council) elects the seven Eyes of God to protect the Man, whose inward eyes are “closing from the Divine vision, & all his children wandering outside, from his bosom fleeing away” (FZ i:553–59; cf. ii:43). “Turning his Eyes outward to Self, losing the Divine Vision” (FZ ii:2), Albion, in a last effort on his couch of death, delivers his sovereignty to Urizen (FZ ii:5). In The Four Zoas, Albion does not reappear until the beginning of Night viii, when the Council of God (Jesus) meets “upon the Limit of Contraction to create the fallen Man” (viii:3), who lies upon the Rock, dreaming horrible dreams. “The limit of Contraction now was fix’d & Man began to wake upon the Couch of Death; he sneezed seven times [thus clearing his brain]; a tear of blood dropped from either eye; again he repos’d in the Saviour’s arms, in the arms of tender mercy & loving kindness” (viii: 16). Later, Enion reports that Man is “collecting up the scatter’d portions of his immortal body into the Elemental forms of every thing that grows. . . . wherever a grass grows or a leaf buds, The Eternal Man is seen, is heard, is felt, and all his sorrows, till he reassumes his ancient bliss” (viii:562, 581). The Last Judgment follows immediately upon the death of the physical body. Albion wakes and laments his fallen state (ix:95–122). He then sits up and calls upon Urizen, to whom he had given his sovereignty when he fell asleep; but Urizen, now the Dragon, cannot answer (ix:123–35). Enraged, Albion blames Urizen as the cause of all the trouble, and threatens to cast him into the Indefinite forever (ix:136–61). Urizen repents, renouncing his attempts to control the other Zoas in fear of futurity, and is instantly rejuvenated (ix:162–93). Albion then tells Urizen of the Incarnation, and of the revolving seasons in Eden (ix:204–25). When the Lamb appears, Albion beholds again the Vision of God (ix:286), upon which long ago he had turned his back. He rises from the Rock and goes with Urizen to meet the Lord coming to Judgment, “but the flames repell’d them still to the Rock; in vain they strove to Enter the Consummation together, for the Redeem’d Man could not enter the Consummation” (ix:286–90). There is work to be done first. The First Day, of Urizen’s plowing and sowing, ends with the evening feast. “The Eternal Man also sat down upon the Couches of Beulah, sorrowful that he could not put off his new risen body in mental flames; the flames refus’d, they drove him back to Beulah. His body was redeem’d to be permanent thro’ Mercy Divine” (ix:354). Orc has now burned out; Albion gives Luvah and Vala into the hands of Urizen (ix:358). After Urizen’s reaping on the Second Day, “the Regenerate Man sat at the feast rejoicing” (ix:587). On the Third Day, Tharmas and Enion are rejuvenated and reunited. “The Eternal Man arose. He welcom’d them to the Feast. . . . And Many Eternal Men sat at the golden feast to see the female form now separate. They shudder’d at the horrible thing” (ix:617–22). These other Eternals “embrac’d the New born Man, calling him Brother, image of the Eternal Father” (ix:643). At the feast after the Fourth Day, the Eternal Man directs Luvah to gather the grapes (ix:693), but at the pressing he “darken’d with sorrow” and summoned Tharmas and Urthona to do their part (ix:693, 772). When Luvah and Vala had slept from exhaustion, they woke and “wept to one another & they reascended to the Eternal Man in woe: he cast them wailing into the world of shadows, thro’ the air, till winter is over & gone” (ix:796). On the Sabbath of the Seventh Day, “Man walks forth from midst of the fires: the evil is all consum’d. . . . The Expanding Eyes of Man behold the depths of wondrous worlds! . . . He walks upon the Eternal Mountains, raising his heavenly voice, conversing with the Animal forms of wisdom night & day . . . in the Vales around the Eternal Man’s bright tent, the little Children play among the wooly flocks. . . .” (ix:827–40). In Milton, Albion-Britain is waked from his deadly sleep by the association of the revolutionist Milton with Blake. As he descends, “First Milton saw Albion upon the Rock of Ages, deadly pale outstretch’d and snowy cold, storm cover’d, a Giant form of perfect beauty outstretch’d on the rock in solemn death: the Sea of Time & Space thunder’d aloud against the rock” (15:36–40). Then Milton “fell thro’ Albion’s heart, travelling outside of Humanity” (20:41). “Albion’s sleeping Humanity began to turn upon his Couch, feeling the electric flame of Milton’s awful precipitate descent” (20:25). Los calls: “Awake, thou sleeper on the Rock of Eternity! Albion awake! The trumpet of Judgment hath twice sounded [in the American and French Revolutions]: all Nations are awake, but thou art still heavy and dull. Awake, Albion awake! Lo, Orc arises on the Atlantic. Lo, his blood and fire glow on America’s shore. Albion turns upon his Couch: he listens to the sounds of War, astonished and confounded: he weeps into the Atlantic deep, yet still in dismal dreams unwaken’d, and the Covering Cherub advances from the East” (23: 3–10). Satan, the Covering Cherub, is Albion’s Spectre (32:12; 37:45). The seven Eyes trumpet: “Awake, Albion awake! reclaim thy Reasoning Spectre. Subdue him to the Divine Mercy. Cast him down into the Lake of Los that ever burneth with fire ever & ever, Amen! Let the Four Zoas awake from Slumbers of Six Thousand Years” (39:10). When Satan appears in his true form, “Then Albion rose up in the Night of Beulah on his Couch of dread repose seen by the visionary eye: his face is toward the east, toward Jerusalem’s Gates.” His body covers the British Isles: his right hand covers Wales, his right elbow leans on Ireland, his left foot reaches from Windsor to Holloway, his right foot stretches to the Dover cliffs, with the heel “on Canterbury’s ruins,” and London is between his knees. But his strength fails, “ & down with dreadful groans he sunk upon his Couch in moony Beulah” (39:32–52). However, in the mystical moment, “Jesus wept & walked forth from Felpham’s Vale clothed in Clouds of blood, to enter into Albion’s Bosom, the bosom of death” (42:19). In Jerusalem, the fall and resurrection of Albion are studied in much more detail. The poem opens as Jesus calls on him to return (4:10), but Albion has turned away and in jealousy hidden his Emanation Jerusalem from her divine bridegroom. Blake sees “the Four-fold Man, The Humanity in deadly sleep and its fallen Emanation, The Spectre & its cruel Shadow” (15:6), and he implores the Divine Spirit to sustain him “that I may awake Albion from his long & cold repose” (15:10). “All his Affections [his Sons] now appear withoutside” (19:17). “Albion’s Circumference was clos’d: his Center began dark’ning into the Night of Beulah” (19:36). He flees inward and finds Jerusalem “soft repos’d in the arms of Vala” (19:40). In the colloquy that follows, it is told how Albion embraced Vala, rending her Veil; but although the Lamb gives Vala to Albion as bride, and takes Jerusalem for his own, both Albion and Vala are overwhelmed with guilt. His children and his whole universe are driven forth and separated from him by his disease of shame. “All is Eternal Death unless you can weave a chaste Body over an unchaste Mind!” (21:11). Therefore Albion commits himself to the materialism of the Moral Law, which is Vala’s Veil. “He recoil’d: he rush’d outwards: he bore the Veil whole away. . . . He drew the Veil of Moral Virtue, woven for Cruel Laws, and cast it into the Atlantic Deep to catch the Souls of the Dead. He stood between the Palm tree & the Oak of weeping which stand upon the edge of Beulah, and there Albion sunk down in sick pallid languor” (23:20–26). His last words are his curse: “May God, who dwells in this dark Ulro & voidness, vengeance take” (23:38). But his lamentations are stopped suddenly by the appearance of the Saviour. “Dost thou appear before me, who liest dead in Luvah’s Sepulcher? Dost thou forgive me, thou who wast Dead & art Alive? Look not so merciful upon me, O thou Slain Lamb of God! I die! I die in thy arms, tho’ Hope is banish’d from me” (24:57). Hereafter, all that ensues before Albion’s resurrection takes place in his dreams. When the second chapter opens, the Moral Law is established. “Every ornament of perfection and every labour of love in all the Garden of Eden & in all the golden mountains was become an envied horror and a remembrance of jealousy, and every Act a Crime, and Albion the punisher & judge. . . . All these ornaments are crimes, they are made by the labours of loves, of unnatural consanguinities and friendships horrid to think of when enquired deeply into; and all these hills & valleys are accursed witnesses of Sin. I therefore condense them into solid rocks, stedfast, a foundation and certainty and demonstrative truth, that Man be separate from Man” (28:1–12). “He sat by Tyburn’s brook [the gallows], and underneath his heel shot up a deadly Tree: he nam’d it Moral Virtue and the Law of God who dwells in Chaos hidden from the human sight” (28:14). “From willing sacrifice of Self, to sacrifice of (miscall’d) Enemies for Atonement, Albion began to erect twelve Altars . . . He nam’d them Justice and Truth” (28:20–23). In the rearranged version, Plates 33–37 follow Plate 28, so that Albion’s Spectre and Vala appear immediately after Albion sets himself up as Judge. “Turning his back to the Divine Vision, his Spectrous Chaos before his face appear’d, an Unformed Memory” (33:1). The Spectre announces: “I am your Rational Power, O Albion, & that Human Form you call Divine is but a Worm seventy inches long” (33:5). Vala then announces the supremacy of woman (33:48–34:1). While Los tries to get Reuben into the Promised Land, “the Divine hand found the Two Limits, Satan and Adam, in Albion’s bosom” (35:1). Los calls on Albion to rouse himself; “Albion fled more indignant, revengeful covering his face and bosom with petrific hardness, and his hands and feet, lest any should enter his bosom & embrace his hidden heart” (37:12–38:3); yet the Saviour follows him, declaring the Universal Family of men in Jesus (38:10–26). Albion flees through the Gate of Los. “Seeing Albion had turn’d his back against the Divine Vision, Los said to Albion: ‘Whither fleest thou?’ Albion reply’d: ‘I die! I go to Eternal Death! . . . God hath forsaken me . . .’” (39:11–23). Los (now the Spectre of Urthona) and Enitharmon escape fromAlbion’s darkening locks and report how Albion worshipped his own Shadow and cast forth Luvah, who had smitten him with boils (29:28–84; cf. FZ iii:44–104). When Los shows his labors to Albion, Albion sees that his would-be victims are his own affections. Furious, he orders Hand and Hyle to bring Los to justice. “And as Albion built his frozen Altars, Los built the Mundane Shell” (42:78). The Twenty-eight Cathedral Cities kneel round Albion’s Couch of Death (41:24); “with one accord in love sublime, & as on Cherubs’ wings, they Albion surround with kindest violence to bear him back against his will thro’ Los’s Gate to Eden. . . . but Albion dark, repugnant, roll’d his Wheels backward into Non-Entity” (44:1–6). War breaks out; again Albion utters his last words: “‘Hope is banish’d from me.’ These were his last words; and the merciful Saviour in his arms reciev’d him, in the arms of tender mercy, and repos’d the pale limbs of his Eternal Individuality upon the Rock of Ages” (47:18–48:4). In Chapter iii, Los builds Golgonooza “in the midst of the rocks of the Altars of Albion” (53:17). “But Albion fell down, a Rocky fragment from Eternity hurl’d by his own Spectre, who is the Reasoning Power in every Man, into his own Chaos, which is the Memory between Man & Man. The silent broodings of deadly revenge, springing from the all powerful parental affection, fills Albion from head to foot” (54:6). “Then Albion drew England [Brittannia] into his bosom in groans & tears, but she stretch’d out her starry Night in Spaces against him” (54:27). The Seven Eyes are established (55:30); the Plowing of the Nations begins (55:54). “But Albion fled from the Divine Vision; with the Plow of Nations enflaming, the Living Creatures madden’d, and Albion fell into the Furrow; and the Plow went over him & the Living was Plowed in among the Dead. But his Spectre rose over the starry Plow. Albion fled beneath the Plow till he came to the Rock of Ages, & he took his Seat upon the Rock” (57:12). War impends. “The clouds of Albion’s Druid Temples rage in the eastern heaven while Los sat terrified beholding Albion’s Spectre, who is Luvah [France], spreading in bloody veins in torments over Europe & Asia, not yet formed” (60:1). War breaks out: “Luvah’s Cloud reddening above burst forth in streams of blood upon the heavens” (62:30). In the confusion that follows, Albion takes no part until his final awakening. “Albion cold lays on his Rock . . . England [Brittannia], a Female Shadow . . . lays upon his bosom heavy . . . And the Body of Albion was closed apart from all Nations. . . . Time was Finished! The breath Divine Breathed over Albion beneath the Furnaces & starry Wheels and in the Immortal Tomb. And England, who is Brittannia, awoke from Death on Albion’s bosom” (94:1–20). She laments that she has murdered her husband “in Dreams of Chastity & Moral Law . . . with the Knife of the Druid. . . . O all ye Nations of the Earth, behold ye the Jealous Wife!” (94:22–26). Her voice wakes Albion; he rises in wrath and grasps his bow, compelling the Zoas to their proper tasks (95:1–18). Brittannia enters his bosom rejoicing (95:22; 96:2). Then Jesus appears standing by Albion; they converse; the cloud of the Covering Cherub, who is Albion’s Self (96:13), divides them (96:29); but Albion sacrifices himself for Jesus (96:35). Instantly all the terrors are a dream; the Zoas enter Albion’s bosom (96:41); and Albion stands by Jesus in heaven, “Fourfold among the Visions of God in Eternity” (96:43). With his fourfold bow he annihilates the Druid Spectre (98:6), and Eternity is achieved in the mystical union of all things. ALBION’S DANCE (often called “Glad Day”) exists in two versions: a line engraving (ca. 1790) and a color print (ca. 1793). The engraving is signed “W. B. 1780,” doubtless the date of Blake’s original design. Albion, a nude irradiant youth with arms outspread, stands on a high eminence, rising above a black downpour from clouds in the background. Between his feet, a moth flies free of its chrysalis, signifying the new birth. In some copies, beneath is written: “Albion rose from where he labour’d at the Mill with Slaves: Giving himself for the Nations he danc’d the dance of Eternal Death.” The subject is political: England rises spiritually above the Industrial Revolution and works for all nations. “Eternal Death” signifies complete self-sacrifice, and Albion’s arms are in the position of the crucifixion. In the color print, the initials, date, month, and inscription cannot be seen. From Albion expands a glory of primary colors. In 1938 Anthony Blunt identified Albion’s posture as that of the “Vitruvian Man.” Vitruvius ( De architectura, iii) had remarked that man’s body is a model of proportion because with arms and legs extended it fits into the perfect geometrical forms, the square and the circle. The Renaissance artists made many attempts to fit the human body into these forms. The earliest known appears in the Trattato d’architettura by Francesco di Giorgio (1439–1502). The best known is that of Leonardo. The nearest to Blake’s is in Scamozzi’s Dell’ idea dell’ architettura universale (1615). Blake could well have been impressed with the idea that Man thus represented the Microcosm; however, he disliked geometry, and omitted the geometrical forms from his picture. Later Blunt (The Art of William Blake, New York, 1959, p. 33 and plates) made a very convincing case that Blake was also influenced by a Roman bronze of a dancing faun. The sunburst effect of the picture gave it early the title of “Glad Day,” on the erroneous assumption that it was inspired by lines in Romeo and Juliet (III.v.9–10): “Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day | Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.” But there are no candles and no mist, nor does the figure stand on tiptoe. ALBION’S DAUGHTERS, in the Visions of the Daughters of Albion, are simply Englishwomen, enslaved in the social mores of their time, who weep over their sorrows and long for the freedom of the body, or “America” (VDA 1:1–2). They hear Oothoon’s woes “ & eccho back her sighs” (2: 20; 5:2; 8:13). In the three major prophecies, however, the Daughters are twelve; they have names, personalities, and functions. They are listed first in an insertion in The Four Zoas (ii:61): Gwendolen, Ragan, Sabrina, Gonorill, Mehetabel, Cordella, Boadicea, Conwenna, Estrild, Gwinefrid, Ignoge, and Cambel, but are not mentioned again in the epic. A revised list appears in Jerusalem (5:40–44): Cambel, Gwendolen, Conwenna, Cordella, Ignoge, Gwiniverra, Gwinefred, Gonorill, Sabrina, Estrild, Mehetabel, and Ragan. Gwiniverra has replaced Boadicea, who is later equated with Cambel (J 71:23). This order is revised again when the Daughters are paired with the Sons (J 71:10–49). The names, “names anciently remember’d, but now contemn’d as fictions” (J 5:38), are derived from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s legendary Historia Britonum and Milton’s History of Britain. Gwinefred alone seems to have no source; it is impossible that she could be the virgin martyr, St. Winifred, of the famous well. Mostly, they are a bad lot: queens, leaders of armies, adulteresses and mistresses, jealous wives, faithless daughters, bastard children. “In every bosom they controll our Vegetative powers” ( J 5:39), for they are all aspects of the sexual strife. “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” (Mil 5:5–10). Five of them are under Tirzah: Cambel (the “Venus pudica”), Gwendolen, Conwenna, Cordella, and Ignoge; the other seven are under Rahab ( J 5:40–44). They set up as Female Wills; they torture men; with their charms they infuriate the warriors to battle. “They are the beautiful Emanations of the Twelve Sons of Albion” ( J 5:45). When Albion is disintegrating they escape from him after the Sons (J 21:7). They come from the four Emanations of the Zoas (J 14:11). Albion is horrified when he learns that their childhood was not so innocent as he supposed (J 21:19–27). As men communicate with others by means of their Emanations, the Twelve Daughters in their ideal state often work together and even produce each other. Hand and Hyle share Cambel and Gwendolen (J 71:23); Coban’s Ignoge adjoins with Gwantoke’s children and becomes the mother of Gwantoke’s Cordella (J 71:28); Breretun’s Ragan adjoins to Slade and produces Slade’s Gonorill ( J 71:33); Kox’s Estrild joins with Gwantoke’s Cordella ( J 71:43); and Kotope’s Sabrina joins with Peachey’s Mehetabel (J 71:45). In the apocalypse, “All the Sons & Daughters of Albion [rise] on soft clouds, waking from Sleep” (J 96:39). For details, see BOADICEA, CAMBEL, CONWENNA, CORDELLA, ESTRILD, GONORILL, GWENDOLEN, GWINEFRED, GWINIVERRA, IGNOGE, MEHETABEL, RAGAN, SABRINA. See also ALBION’S SONS below. ALBION’S SONS escape from his Bosom when he falls into his deadly sleep (J 32:10). They are his affections (J 19:17), or the States of his Center, or Heart (J 71:9). Their twelve names are Hand, Hyle, Coban, Guantok, Peachey, Brereton, Slade, Hutton, Scofield, Kox, Kotope, and Bowen. As eight of these names were derived from those connected with Blake’s trial for treason (Hayley, Quantock, Peachey, Brereton, Hutton, Scofield, Cock, and Bowen), it may be assumed that the other four were also involved, although they have not been identified. The last four are separated from the others in the first listing (J 5:27); they are “one” in Scofield, Blake’s accuser (J 7:47); and they are the only Sons assigned compass points (J 71:40, 43, 45, 48). They are the Accusers; from which fact one might assume that the first four are the Executioners (and Hand is certainly that), and the middle four are the Judges. However, this classification is not satisfactory. The first three (Hand, Hyle, and Coban) are grouped together six times (Mil 19:58; 23:15; J 8:41; 9:21; 18:41; 36:15), and are evidently the Head, Heart, and Loins. The next three (Guantok, Peachey, and Brereton) have been identified as three of Blake’s judges. This leaves Slade and Hutton unclassified. There is a further complication in the fact that the Twelve Tribes are the spiritual equivalents of the Twelve Sons. “And above Albion’s Land was seen the Heavenly Canaan as the Substance is to the Shadow, and above Albion’s Twelve Sons were seen Jerusalem’s Sons and all the Twelve Tribes spreading over Albion. As the Soul is to the Body, so Jerusalem’s Sons are to the Sons of Albion” ( J 71:1). Hand, the first of Albion’s Sons, cuts the fibres of Reuben, the first of the Tribes ( J 90:25); similarly Bowen, the last of the Sons, cuts the fibres from Benjamin, the last Tribe (J 90:15). But the allocation of counties to the Sons and the Tribes do not correspond. Further attempts to equate the two lists seem futile. In their state of Innocence, the “Sons came to Jerusalem with gifts; she sent them away with blessings on their hands & on their feet, blessings of gold and pearl & diamond” (J 24:38). This perfect state, when they dwell in the various Cathedral Cities with their Emanations, is described at length (J 71:10–49). But when they become separate from Albion, they rage to devour his sleeping Humanity (J 5:30; 78:2); they renounce their father and declare war against him (J 18:13, 21), also against the Saviour (J 18:37), the Imagination (J 5:58), Golgonooza and Los’s Furnaces (J 5:29), Jerusalem (J 18:11), and Erin (J 78:12). See ERIN. They are Spectres (J 65:56; 66:15; 78:1), having petrified their Emanations (J 8:43; 9:1). They have constructed an Abstract Philosophy to war against the Imagination (J 5:58). “And this is the manner of the Sons of Albion in their strength: they take the Two Contraries which are call’d Qualities, with which Every Substance is clothed: they name them Good & Evil; from them they make an Abstract, which is a Negation not only of the Substance from which it is derived, a murderer of its own Body, but also a murderer of every Divine Member: it is the Reasoning Power, an Abstract objecting power that Negatives every thing” (J 10:7). “The Spectre is the Reasoning Power in Man, & when separated from Imagination and closing itself as in steel in a Ratio of the Things of Memory, It thence frames Laws & Moralities to destroy Imagination, the Divine Body, by Martyrdoms & Wars” (J 74:10). When Albion establishes his Law, they flee, being the first Transgressors ( J 28:23; 48:61), “trembling victims of his Moral Justice” (J 23:34). They assume the Providence of God and “slay” him (J 24:56), and lay him on a golden couch round which they rear “their Druid Patriarchal rocky Temples” ( J 32:14), preaching Vengeance and “planting these Oaken Groves, Erecting these Dragon Temples” (J 25:4). Although they began by crucifying Vala, whom Nimrod released ( J 22:2), they soon hail her as their Goddess Virgin-Mother (J 18:29), crowning her with gold and giving her power over the Earth, “even to the stars exalting her Throne, to build beyond the Throne of God and the Lamb” (J 78:15– 20). “Furious in pride of Selfhood [they] rear their dark Rocks among the Stars of God” (J 58:48). They build the druid Stonehenge as Vala’s temple, “Natural Religion & its Altars Natural Morality” (J 66:2, 8). They corrupt the Twenty-four Cathedral Cities, “raging against their Human natures, rav’ning to gormandize the Human majesty and beauty of the Twenty-four, condensing them into solid rocks with cruelty and abhorrence, suspition & revenge” (J 19:23; 42:48). However, when the Cities try to save man, they can still curb their Spectres severely (J 42:67), which “rage within” (J 41:25) and “cry out from the deeps beneath” (J 42:57). The Sons become the twelve pagan gods (Mil 37:34; J 74:22). They are murderous towards their Emanations, “the infant Loves & Graces . . . infant thoughts & desires,” which they petrify (J 8:44; 9:2). But Los builds Golgonooza to protect them (J 53:23); he dashes in pieces the Sons’ “Self-righteousnesses . . . lest they destroy the Feminine Affections” ( J 78:6–8); and he bids the Daughters of Beulah to “separate Albion’s Sons gently from their Emanations” (J 83:49). This separation is necessary because the Emanations have become Female Wills and the Sons’ enemies. The two chief Emanations, “Cambel & Gwendolen wove webs of war & of religion to involve all Albion’s sons, and when they had involv’d Eight, their webs roll’d outwards into darkness” (J 7:44). Their machinations are described at length later (J 80:37–82:79). The Starry Wheels are the Sons’. See WHEELS. The twelve become “as Three Immense Wheels” (J 18:8; 8:34) which as they turn rend a way into Albion’s loins ( J 18:43). These form the “Satanic Mill” of the Industrial Revolution (J 19:19); here the Sons grind the living and the dead “for bread of the Sons of Albion” (J 43:50). But Los fixes their systems “permanent, by mathematic power, giving a body to Fals[e]hood that it may be cast off for ever” (J 12:12). The Twelve Sons are “enrooted into every Nation, a mighty Polypus growing fromAlbion over the whole Earth” (J 15:4). Soon Hand, the selfish Head, absorbs them all (J 8:43), and becomes the Polypus. See POLYPUS. “From these Twelve all the Families of England spread abroad” (J 5:33). In the apocalpyse, “All the Sons & Daughters of Albion [rise] on soft clouds, waking from Sleep” (J 96:39). For further details, see ALBION’S DAUGHTERS, above; also BOWEN, BRERETON, COBAN, GUANTOK, HAND, HUTTON, HYLE, KOTOPE, KOX, PEACHEY, SCOFIELD, SLADE. ALL RELIGIONS ARE ONE ( ca. 1788), a small tractate, perhaps Blake’s first experiment in his illuminated printing, exists in only one copy. It affirms that the Imagination (“the Poetic Genius”) is “the true Man”; that it creates man’s body and the forms of all things; that (allowing for infinite variety) all men are alike in the Poetic Genius; that all sects of philosophy are derived from it, “adapted to the weaknesses of every individual”; that all religions are derived from each nation’s different reception of the Poetic Genius; and that the two Testaments “are an original derivation from the Poetic Genius.” Thus early Blake had completed his revolutionary theory of the nature of Man and proclaimed the unity of all true religions. The influence of Lavater’s Aphorisms is obvious. The very first two read: “Know, in the first place, that mankind agree in essence, as they do in their limbs and senses. Mankind differ as much in essence as they do in form, limbs, and senses—and only so, and not more.” Blake commented: “This is true Christian philosophy far above all abstraction” (K 65). Blake also probably had in mind Spenser’s “For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make” (Hymn to Beauty 133). ALLA is the second of the four States of Humanity in its repose; it is situated in the heart (Mil 34:12, 14). The other three are Beulah (head); Al-Ulro (loins); and Or-Ulro (digestive tract). “Multitudes of those who sleep in Alla” are lured down by the war-music of the Covering Cherub, and are absorbed in the Antichrist (J 89:58). ALLAMANDA is the nervous system of the vegetated man. It is constantly associated with Bowlahoola, which combines the respiratory, the circulatory, and the digestive systems; and often with Entuthon-Benython, the flesh and bones. Allamanda, the nervous system, is the apparatus for giving and receiving communications. On earth it is called “Commerce” and is “the Cultivated land around the city of Golgonooza in the Forests of Entuthon. Here the Sons of Los labour against Death Eternal” (Mil 27:42). Here they clothe with flesh the wailing souls yet unbodied and “provide houses & fields” (Mil 26:30); here they also build the inward form of every generated body as “a garden of delight & a building of magnificence” (Mil 26:32). “Were it not for Bowlahoola & Allamanda, no Human Form but only a Fibrous Vegetation, a Polypus of soft affections without Thought or Vision, must tremble in the Heavens & Earths thro’ all the Ulro space” (Mil 24:36). The two are placed on each side of the Globule of Blood and the creative Pulsation (Mil 29:25). See BOWLAHOOLA and ENTUTHON-BENYTHON. ALLEGORY is a literary device in which abstractions are personified. “Allegories are things that Relate to Moral Virtues. Moral Virtues do not Exist; they are Allegories & dissimulations” ( LJ, K 614). Allegory is conceived in the intellect and seeks emotional form. Symbolism, however, is a literary device in which psychological realities rise from the subconscious and take sensorial form. Allegory is a riddle, which fails unless it is solved; symbolism is a dream, which fails if its entire meaning is obvious. Allegory is to poetry what dogma is to religion. As far as I know, Blake was the first English critic to distinguish between the two. “The Last Judgment is not Fable or Allegory, but Vision [symbolism]. . . . Vision or Imagination is a Representation of what Eternally Exists, Really & Unchangeably. Fable or Allegory is Form’d by the daughters of Memory. Imagination is surrounded by the daughters of Inspiration, who in the aggregate are call’d Jerusalem. Fable is Allegory, but what Critics call The Fable, is Vision itself. The Hebrew Bible & the Gospel of Jesus are not Allegory, but Eternal Vision or Imagination of All that Exists. Note here that Fable or Allegory is seldom without some Vision. Pilgrim’s Progress is full of it, the Greek Poets the same; but Allegory & Vision ought to be known as Two Distinct Things, & so call’d for the Sake of Eternal Life” (LJ, K 604). Whenever Blake uses the word “allegory” (with one or two exceptions) he means something falsified from an original. Thus Enitharmon’s doctrine promises eternal life “in an allegorical abode where existence hath never come” (Eur 5:7). The economists “fix the price of labour, to invent allegoric riches” (SoL 6:17). The religion of chastity reveals “hidden wonders, allegoric of the Generations of secret lust” (FZ vii b:24). The Tree of Mystery “unfolds in Allegoric fruit” (FZ viii:169). “The Atlantic Mountains where Giants dwelt in Intellect [are] now given to stony Druids and Allegoric Generation” (J 50:1). Jerusalem, when in the stomach of the Covering Cherub, is bewildered “in allegoric delusion & woe” (J 89:45). Dr. Thornton’s God “is only an Allegory of Kings & nothing Else” (On Thornton, K 789). Ordinary marriage in this world is the result of Gwendolen’s falsehood, which grew till it became “a Space & an Allegory around the Winding Worm” ( J 85:1); this is “the little lovely Allegoric Night of Albion’s Daughters” ( J 88:31). Albion tries to limit Los by “rending the fibres of Brotherhood & in Feminine Allegories inclosing Los” (J 30:18). The one important exception when Blake used the word with approval seems to have been a slip of the pen. “Allegory address’d to the Intellectual powers, while it is altogether hidden from the Corporeal Understanding, is My Definition of the Most Sublime Poetry” (To Butts, 6 July 1803). ALLEN was Major-General Ethan Allen (1748–89), an American Revolutionary soldier and author. With Benedict Arnold, he took Fort Ticonderoga in 1775. Later that year he was captured at Montreal, but was exchanged in 1778. In 1779 he published A Narrative of Col. Ethan Allen’s Captivity. Reason the Only Oracle of Man (1784), his outstanding book, expressed his Deism. He is mentioned in Blake’s America (14:2). “The ALMIGHTY” is the common translation of “Shaddai” in the King James Bible. Blake identified the two when “the Harrow of the Almighty” (Mil 4:1) is also called “the Harrow of Shaddai” (Mil 4:12). Shaddai, in Blake’s system, is the Accuser, a fact which sheds light on “the wine of the Almighty” by which Luvah intoxicated Urizen and thus got control of the chariot of light (FZ v:234). See SHADDAI. But elsewhere Blake did not use the word in this special sense. Truth dwells with “the Almighty Father” (PS, “Samson” 4). “The breath of the Almighty” is likened to “the fury of Poetic Inspiration” (Mil 30: 18). “And the bitter groan of a Martyr’s woe | Is an Arrow from the Almightie’s Bow” ( J 52:27). The Spectre asserts that “the Almighty hath made me his Contrary” (J 10:56). Elsewhere again, the Almighty would seem to be simply the supreme God. The seven Eyes of God (which include Shaddai) are “the Seven Lamps of the Almighty” (FZ i:554). The constellations are “Forty-eight deformed Human Wonders of the Almighty” ( Mil 37:54). And in a sarcastic paraphrase of dogmatic theology, Blake even equates him with the evil creator, adding “First God Almighty comes with a Thump on the Head. Then Jesus Christ comes with a balm to heal it” (LJ, K 617). The ALPS are inhabited by the Swiss, long known as champions of “the Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty.” Rousseau and Voltaire, heralds of the French Revolution, established residences there. The clouds of the impending Revolution “roll heavy upon the Alps round Rousseau & Voltaire” (SoL 4:18). “Orc, raging in European darkness, arose like a pillar of fire above the Alps” (SoL 7:26). Various mountains, including the Alps, listen to Los’s watch-song (J 85:16). AMALEK, grandson of Esau, was the eponym of the Amalekites, the southernmost of the heathen nations surrounding Palestine. The Amalekites attacked the Israelites on their way from Goshen, and were smitten successively by Joshua, Gideon, Saul, and David. Blake used the Amalekite females to symbolize the sexual temptations which the outlandish women offered to the sons of Israel. They are daughters of Tirzah; “their various divisions are call’d the daughters of Amalek, Canaan & Moab” (FZ viii:294; cf. J 82:24). Blake often refers to this triad (Mil 24:14; J 29:31; 80:50; 82:24; 83:16; 86:28), which presumably represents the loins (Amalek being South), heart, and head. The Amalekite women are named for the daughters of Zelophehad, and their song (which is also the song of Tirzah) describes their torture of the males (FZ viii: 297–321; expanded in J 67:44–68:9). Los and Enitharmon escape from this triad (J 29:31). When the Hermaphrodite tempts the undergraduate Milton, he says: “The beautiful Amalekites behold the fires of youth bound with the Chain of Jealousy by Los & Enitharmon” (Mil 19:37). Los says that the infant Joseph “was sold to the Amalekite who carried him down into Egypt” (Mil 24:19). Amalek is one of the countries which receive Jerusalem’s little ones for sacrifices and the delights of cruelty (J 5:14). Los “woos” to Amalek to protect his fugitives, and Amalek trembles ( J 83:16). Reuben enroots “beneath the shining Looms of Albion’s daughters in Philistea by the side of Amalek” (J 74:45). The Lamb of God stands before Satan “upon the heights of Amalek” (FZ viii:270). Amalek also seems to be one of a quaternary. Los sees “the Amalekite, the Canaanite, the Moabite, the Egyptian” outside of Golgonooza (J 13:58); later he says that these same four are “by Demonstrations the cruel Sons of Quality & Negation” (J 43:67). AMAZONIA was a name sometimes given to the valley of the Amazon River. It is the thirty-first of the Thirty-two Nations which shall protect liberty and govern the rest of the world (J 72:42). AMERICA is the continent of the West, and as such represents the Body and its five senses, especially sex. Just as the Body is now cut off from the rest of the individual by its material form, so America is cut off from the other three continents by the ocean (matter). Historically, America, the birthplace of Orc (Revolution), represents Liberty, especially the liberty of the Body. In the cycle of continents, it is preceded by Africa (slavery) and is followed by Europe and Asia (counterrevolution). It is to this land of the West that the sex-starved youths and maidens of “Ah! Sun-Flower” (SoE) aspire. The Daughters of Albion sigh towards America; and Oothoon seeks for the soft soul of America. But her flight thither is interrupted by Bromion, who claims her soft American plains (VDA 1:2, 3, 20). The outbreak of the American Revolution is symbolized in “A Song of Liberty” (MHH). The ominous pause beforehand is felt in England, America, France, and Spain. Orc is born, and confronts Urizen on the Atlantean mountains. Urizen hurls him into the western sea, only to suffer a Satanic fall himself. He promulgates the Ten Commandments, eyeing in dismay Orc, who is destroying curses, law, empire, and sexual repression. The subsequent separation of the two countries is political as well as spiritual. “Albion clos’d the Western Gate, & shut America out by the Atlantic, for a curse, and hidden horror, and an altar of victims to Sin and Repentance” (FZ iii:105). This is also the attitude of Enitharmon, as reported by the mendacious Gwendolen: “But hide America, for a Curse, an Altar of Victims, & a Holy Place,” from which Jerusalem is to be cut off (J 82:29–34). And America is “clos’d out by the Oaks of the western shore” (J 43:6)—the oaks being druidic, and possibly referring by an extension of meaning to the British Navy and the blockade of the War of 1812. Erin unaccountably orders: “Build & prepare a Wall & Curtain for America’s shore!” (J 49:49). But underneath the hostility, the basic feeling is love, even envy, of America, and sorrow for the separation. Rintrah and Palamabron see hope in Orc’s blood and fire on America’s shore ( Mil 23:6). When Oothoon descends into Beulah, England weeps, and trembles towards America (Mil 31:14). Los laments that America is closed apart (J 43:69); indeed, the two Americas are his baths of living waters (J 58:43). Erin bids Sihon and Og to move back to their own lands and leave the secret coverts of Albion and the hidden places of America ( J 49:1). Sabrina and Mehetabel shine west over America (J 71:45). Jerusalem laments that she no longer sees America, and remembers its golden mountains (J 79:53). Los plans to hide the Tribes of Llewellyn there (J 83:59), perhaps from the aggressions of Edward I. The remaining references to America simply include it as an essential part of the world. Albion trembles in all lands, including “Great America” (Mil 14:7). The Loom of Death operates to all four quarters, including “America North & South” (Mil 35:17). All countries center in London and Golgonooza, including America (J 72:31). See VIPER. AMERICA, A PROPHECY. Lambeth, printed by William Blake in the Year 1793, was the first of Blake’s books to name a place in the imprint. To publish where he lived on the title page of so controversial a book, with his name in full for the first time, was an act of defiant courage in 1793, when the counter-revolution was building up, and the government (on May 21) had passed its act against “divers wicked and seditious writings” (Erd 197). “I say I shan’t live five years, And if I live one it will be a Wonder. June 1793,” Blake jotted in his notebook ( K 187). Five years later he was to write: “To defend the Bible in this year 1798 would cost a man his life. The Beast & the Whore rule without control” (On Watson, K 383). He worked hard to make this book perfect. He engraved four plates, then discarded them. One of them had actually named George III, yet in his final text “the King of England” was obviously that unfortunate monarch. On the second plate of the final text, he eliminated four lines which merely reflected his own personal reactions of rage and shame at the situation. For the first time, he designated one of his books as “a prophecy.” He was no longer attempting to dramatize history, as in The French Revolution; instead, he was recording the formula of all revolution, utilizing the American material without regard for chronology. He concentrated particularly on the dramatic events in Boston, Massachusetts, beginning just after the Boston Massacre of 1770 (“the coast glowing with blood from Albion’s fiery Prince,” Am 3:5). See BOSTON. The American patriots convene; Washington warns them of the increasing tyranny; “Albion’s wrathful Prince” threatens them with war (“a dragon form”); whereupon Orc appears and a voice (Paine’s?) proclaims the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (6:1–11; see Erd 23). Albion’s Angel accuses Orc of being the Dragon of Revelation (see WOMAN IN THE WILDERNESS); Orc replies that he is the Serpent in Paradise (the Messiah, who tempts man to break the prohibitions—see ORC), proclaiming the holiness of all life and the destruction of the Ten Commandments. The Angel bids the war-trumpets sound, but the thirteen colonies remain silent and refuse the loud alarm. Instead, they meet and renounce their allegiance. The thirteen royal governors and their troops are terrified. Then the Angel sheds diseases on America, thereby enraging its inhabitants; but the diseases recoil dreadfully on the British Isles. Finally the leprous Urizen is manifested. He manages to conceal Orc from European eyes “till Angels & weak men twelve years should govern o’er the strong; and then their end should come, when France reciev’d the Demon’s light” (16:14). France, Spain, and Italy in terror strive to shut “the five gates of their law-built heaven” (16:19), but the fires of Orc consume the gates. Thus the poem closes, foretelling the worldwide spread of the American idea. Ingeniously digging out the historical material embedded in the poem, Erdman has demonstrated that Blake utilized it without regard for chronology. Washington’s opening speech, however, occurs at a non-historical meeting, which Joel Barlow invented for his Vision of Columbus (1787), though he placed it immediately after the battle of Bunker Hill. The meeting of the governors at Bernard’s house was also non-historical, as Bernard had been recalled in 1769. The voice which proclaims the principles of the Declaration of Independence (probably Paine) precedes the actual Declaration by some eighty lines. The naval bombardments and burning of towns (4:3; 12:10) precede the command to fire (14:3). The king with “aged limbs” was really only thirty-seven. The various surrenders of British arms are compressed into a single act of terror (13:6). Such events as Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, Saratoga, and Yorktown are not specified. Blake continued his tale in Europe; then, to make the cycle of continents complete, he wrote “Africa” and “Asia,” giving a general title for all four: The Song of Los. “Africa,” the continent of slavery, ends with the first line of America, the continent of revolution and liberty. “Asia” continues the tale of Europe. The “Preludium” of America gives a fragment of the myth of Orc: his reaching the age of potency, breaking his fetters, and embracing the Shadowy Female. This “Preludium” is continued in the “Preludium” of Europe. America is, pictorially, the most brilliant of Blake’s books. It glows with the colors of sunrise. “Turning over the leaves,” wrote Gilchrist (I, 309), “it is sometimes like an increase of light on the retina, so fair and open is the effect of particular pages.” But the Revolution is not all the glory which the text implies. Orc, though spiritual in origin and essential to man’s progress, operates in the material world by material means. The pictures trace, subtly at first, the degeneration of the revolutionary ideals. While Orc is still chained under the Tree of Mystery, his sullen imagination crouches, on the level of the Worm, beneath the tree’s roots, which vegetate above him in the shape of a copulating couple (Plate 1). He bursts up through the ground in a sunrise (Plate 2). Then, on the first page (Plate 3) of “A Prophecy”—the letters expand into ears of wheat, but are also involved with the ivy-vine of experience—a man soars upward with broken fetters, while below himAlbion’s Angel blows flames from his war-trumpet, causing a family to flee from its burning home. On the next page (Plate 4) a griffin pursues Urizen, with his books of law and sceptre of dominion, to his downfall; below, men cower among the fallen trunks of the forest of error. The griffin, who must signify War, does not resemble Blake’s other war-dragons, but was probably inspired by the griffin on the masthead of the Massachusetts Spy; Paul Revere, the engraver, confronted it with Franklin’s snake “Join, or Die.” A Last Judgment (Plate 5) and a Resurrection (Plate 6) follow; but below the rejuvenated man are evil signs: a thistle; a lizard catching a fly; a toad facing a rampant adder. Innocence sleeps by a ram, the protector of the flock, in a sunrise (Plate 7), but the next plate reveals Urizen on high, still dominant. The last five plates are all pessimistic. An old man enters his tomb; Oothoon is torn by an eagle, while a drowned man is devoured by fish; Rahab beneath the sterile Tree preaches materialism to a youth; females, cowering in the intoxicating flames of lust, vegetate; and finally, prostrate Nature prays on the verge of an abyss; behind her is a small forest of vegetated forms; and the colophon entwines thorny plants and snakes. The high ideals of the Revolution have failed. AMMON was a hostile kingdom east of the Jordan, bounded on the south by Moab (from which it was separated by the Arnon), on the west by Sihon, on the north by Og (from which it was separated by the Jabbok), and on the east by wilderness. It was subdued with great slaughter by Jephthah and finally conquered by David. Molech was worshipped there (Mil 37:21). Naamah the Ammonite, a wife of Solomon and the mother of Rehoboam, appears in the “Maternal Line” as an ancestor of Mary (J 62:12). Ammon and five other hostile kingdoms receive Jerusalem’s little ones for sacrifice (J 5:14). With two others, it is included in Jerusalem’s reins (J 86:28). Satan’s bosom reflects Moab and Ammon on the Arnon (J 89:24). Ammon, as one of the seven hostile kingdoms surrounding Jerusalem, finally exists only in the memory and in possibility (J 92:23). AMSTERDAM. The voice of the wandering Reuben echoes in all the cities of the nations, including Amsterdam (J 84:14). ANAK was the son of Arba, founder of the city Kirjath-Arba, or Hebron. The Anakim were giants of terrifying size, whom Joshua conquered and virtually annihilated (Josh xi:21–22). Hebron was assigned to Caleb, who expelled from there Anak’s three sons, Sheshui, Ahiman, and Talmon ( Josh xv:13–14). Anak, Og, Sihon, and Satan constitute an evil quaternary (FZ i:507; Mil 22:33), whose function is to oppose Man’s progress towards Eternity. Anak is particularly paired with Og. These two dwell beyond the skies with Chaos and Night, in the seat of Satan; they are set there to prevent Man from passing through the gates in brain and heart and loins, which open into Golgonooza (Mil 20:33–40); these are the doors of eternity (Mil 31:49). These two “Giants of Albion” were placed there by Jehovah (J 49:56). They are also responsible for the looms, mills, prisons, and workhouses which prevent Man from leading a spiritual life (J 13:57). Luvah erroneously calls Satan, Og, Sihon, and the Anakim the sons of Jerusalem (FZ i:507). The two Sons of Los fear that Milton will loose the quaternary on Albion (Mil 22:33). The four Sons of Los peruse Albion’s tomb in the starry characters of Og and Anak [query: Sihon?] ( J 73:16). In the Stomach of the Covering Cherub are seen the forces hostile to Israel, including Sihon, Og, and the Anakim (J 89:47). ANANA was Ariston’s stolen bride. “Ariston ran forth with bright Anana” ( FZ frag. incipit “Beneath the veil,” 6). ANANTON is mentioned once, as the sixth in the list of the Sons of Los and Enitharmon (FZ viii:358). Enanto, the sixth of the Daughters (FZ viii:364), whose name closely resembles his, is his Emanation. ANGEL is the G