A Language Analysis of Names in William Blake's Works

by Christopher Lane

Introduction: Language Analysis as a Method for Understanding Mythical and Mystical Meta-Languages

"But you ought to know that What is Grand is necessarily obscure to Weak men. That which can be made Explicit to the Idiot is not worth my care."
                                         William Blake, Letter to Dr. Trusler (Erdman, p. 676)

"A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably."
                                         Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

A General Statement of the Problem

The language of the visionary presents any reader with a tangle of peculiar difficulties. The writer's words profess to translate some otherworldly reality into human terms, to penetrate a mystery which cannot be known to the ordinary, common-sense mind. The visionary state exists beyond rational understanding, outside of the realm of the five senses. It defies definition by denotation, fixation into concrete terminology. The typical reader, on the other hand, frequently has only reason and the concrete world as common bearings. How can this reader understand or appreciate visionary literature? Is it enough to regard the mysterious visionary systems of Jacob Boehme and William Blake as merely cases of sublime hallucination? Or must one actually become a visionary, incorporate oneself within the system, to comprehend it? Is there perhaps a third way, which lies somewhere between both extremes, which can accomplish a reasonably clear understanding of visionary language within the confines of the ordinary world experience?

The language used by visionary writers, though it may resemble the structure of ordinary English and frequently draws from the same bank of words, is in fact something approaching a separate language — a meta-language, or jargon, that behaves in some ways similar to the specialized languages of many different fields and disciplines. In attempting to describe a mystery, the visionary invariably resorts to a vocabulary which is itself mysterious. Words, sometimes capitalized and sometimes not, take on extraordinary, deeper significances. These deeper meanings ultimately go beyond any particular meaning, since mystery seems to elude that which is defined or limited by a particular understanding. By reaching into an impenetrable set of cryptic terms, the visionary can create grammatical structures that do follow the patterns of ordinary language. Yet the reader seems to be constantly edged into a higher "profundity." Syntactic relations, though they seem to be in place, resist scrutiny, push outward against the limits of understanding. The mystery itself becomes the subject of the language:

Not to the sensual ear, but more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.
                                               John Keats, Ode on a Gercian Urn

An Example from Boehme

Within the self-enclosed system, words also become self-referential. The language continually circles back to itself for its own reference points and for bearings upon which other points may be abstracted or elaborated. Some of the more obvious structures are analyzable, even when meanings may remain obscure. The following passage from Jacob Boehme illustrates two possibilities:

And no place or position can be conceived or found where the spirit of the tri-unity is not present, and in every being; but hidden to the being, dwelling in itself, as an essence that at once fills all and yet dwells not in being, but itself has a being in itself.
                                               Jacob Boehme, Six Theosophic Points¹
(Italics mine)

fills all and yet dwells not in being. (Both x and not-x.)

the eternal birth of the Word... takes place without a genetrix or without bringing forth. (Both x and not-x.)

the water of eternal life, which the fire drinks. (Fusion of x and a contrary or antithetical form y.)

   ^{—————>      ———>}
itself has being in itself
   _{<———————————}

The inner will, which exists within in itself, has stirred up its own nature, as the centre, which, passing out of itself, is desirous of the light which is pressing forth from the centre.
                                               Jacob Boehme, Six Theosophic Points

                ... 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 (Erdman, p. 146)

An Example from Zen Koans

But surely something is wrong. It seems as though the language of the visionary — since it does mimic or, perhaps, parody ordinary language as well as draw from the same vocabulary — ought to be intelligible in some way. The familiar structure, the model in which the original mystery was expressed, should be identifiable, for there might be where a confusion arose.³ One of the Greek paradoxes, for example, "the way up and the way down are the same," resembles the assertion, say, of a room having only one door: "The way in and the way out are the same." The difference is that for the second sentence I have established a context in a concrete, sensorily understandable set of referents, namely, this room and that one door. But without that set of referents, the sentence by itself could be interpreted just as mystically. The paradox is founded only on an abstraction, a notion of space disembodied from any particular location, which may be merely a trick of language.

The Zen koan, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" presents a similar problem. A grammatical analogy might be found in, "What is the sound of a bell ringing?" The answer to the second question is easily comprensible. Get a bell, ring it, and you will know what the sound of that instance of a bell sounds like, i.e., its unique ringing tone. You still do not know what the sound of all bells is when they are ringing. But the definition of a bell, whether a general idea of one or a particular instance, contains the idea that it will produce a ringing tone: One bell produces one ringing sound (unless of course, it has no clapper, in which case you may be said to have a defective instance of a bell). The question, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" contains a similar kind of defective construct: the sound of clapping necessitates the use of two hands by its very definition. To answer the koan logically, you must resort to tricks of language, or instantiation — creation of a particular instance — to create an artificial context for the riddle: the clapping sound may be electronically generated by a computer (no hands are required at all), or you may equivocate by saying that "one hand" produces the clapping sound by striking another "one hand" and that sound is the "sound of one hand clapping," or that "one hand" can produce the "sound of clapping" by slapping one's thigh, and so on. The whole point of Zen koans is not to produce logical answers but simply to get the disciple to think more deeply. In reality, there is no answer to this question, but at least the form of the riddle is clarified: Take any word which by definition is two things or a plural which by definition is one thing, and use it in a peculiar or special sense. For example, everyone owns at least one pair of pants. Now go and try to slip into one pant. (One might spend a lifetime trying.) The difficulty arises, of course, from the misuse of grammatical analogy and from the use of a word in a sense other than that of ordinary expression. "Pants" is a singular noun in a class of words that might have been expressed in ancient Greek using a "dual" case; it conveys within its denotative meaning the notion of duality, of containing or being "two things in one." The "sound of hands clapping" likewise embodies either a dual, or else multiple, sense. At least one person having two hands, striking them together, must perform the action we know as "clapping"; or else an audience of many people, each individual striking his or her two hands together, may cause applause. For a sound to occur, one thing must necessarily strike another (for example, a bell's "clapper" when it strikes the bell itself produces the sound). Thus, to instantiate a class of words that exists as a dual, or multiple conception, constitutes a violation of normal, expected usage.

But how does the ordinary mind comprehend such description rationally? In the language, the visionary both creates and conceals. The visionary writer identifies him/herself as the teller of secret knowledge, inaccessible to the ordinary mind. When one asks, "what does such and such mean?" a dialectic materializes: Either one accepts the validity of the vision that is described or one dismisses it as nonsense, an imaginative fiction, or an hallucination. Frequently, rationalistic analysis ends up by asking the question differently, "What is the speaker doing?" For example in the previous paragraph, by justifying the misuse of language in a Zen koan as a type of Socratic teaching technique, I similarly changed the subject and answered the question, "What is the speaker doing?" rather than "What do the words mean?" This statement of the problem clarifies the suspicion, or skepticism, that is always raised in the analytic perception. The mystic's alternative of acceptance necessarily involves a leap of faith, a disconnecting of rationalistic, sensory-oriented bearings in this world into a realm of simple belief in the existence of that other eternal world. The skeptical alternative of dismissing produces little in the way of progress toward any understanding and does not dissolve any of the problems. The visionary will not care, since he or she never professes to have anything to do with the rational world, and just as many people outside the visionary system will remain puzzled. A third possible answer is that "The question itself has no meaning."

An Example from The Book of Urizen

What might be the use of such a structural scrutiny to an examination of some of William Blake's more peculiar visions? A strange, almost impenetrable language opens The Book of Urizen:

Lo, a shadow of horror is risen
In Eternity! Unknown, unprolific!
Self-clos'd, all-repelling: what Demon
Hath form'd this abominable void
This soul-shudd'ring vacuum?-- (Erdman, p. 69)

The reader is confronted with yet another layer of "difference" from common speech: the language is almost self-consciously that of poetic utterance, still further removed from ordinary language. The opening lines are exclamatory, almost vocative ("Lo"!). Use of poetic diction (Longinus's "language of the Sublime") presents a further layer of problematical language, dense and difficult to begin with because many words used in poetry are moribund in the spoken vernacular and actively used only in poetry. Poetry's lack of an ordinary language denotative locus actually enriches its connotative power as a form like that of "religious language" similar to liturgical Latin, Greek, or Old Church Slavonic. The difference is that poetic diction is an "art-" or "craft-" language system (German Kunstsprache). Furthermore, the technical associations of specialized words may always have been poetic, lacking any clear etymology and buried beyond the reach of memory. Blake's rhythms and word choices echo John Milton's Paradise Lost both literally and ironically, since the creation of Urizen (equated in Blake's mind with the Biblical Jehovah) is presented in terms which Milton, in the parallel passage, uses in describing Satan. If one understands Blake as a poet, what will one have learned? Blake seems to define his role, as poet, as equatable with the ancient priest who interpreted, gave form to the nonsense words of the Sibyl, and who formulated prophecy. But what of the language itself? Is it there for some purpose, beyond merely setting an ominous tone and dark mood? Or is it merely intended to reflect the obscurity from which it springs — as the unfathomable remains unintelligible except to divine intelligence?

Langue vs. Image Repetoire (Meta-Language)

To the extent that all language participates in a degree of specialization according to context, the language of mysticism and mythology is no different from any other meta-language. For example, when one reads a review of a concert performance or of a recording, the music critic uses terms like "bars" or "notes" differently from the ordinary language user. We understand the context of usage, and do not mistake "bars" to refer to taverns or to steel objects or "notes" to mean dollar bills or scribbled pieces of paper exchanged by friends. But the specialized system of music criticism governs the way one reads the concert review; words are meaningful perhaps by analogy, extension, or merely by virtue of a locus of connotations, but certainly the context primarily guides our perception of the words. In terms of poetic or literary conventions, William Blake's use of terms such as "vortex" and "visionary forms dramatic" — like W. B. Yeats's "gyres" — may be viewed singly as metaphors or as operating within a mythical system and imparting meaning to readers by analogy and extension with experiences of reading other poetical or visionary experiences. But we as readers are not bound by conventions, because we compare within our own minds and lives all the time, just as in reading, we compare to our own lives.⁷ Mysticism, using language which resembles religious and prophetic writing, demands that we grasp — but furthermore internalize in some sense — the meaning behind the utterance. Thus it must be accepted on its own terms as a plausible and meaningful expression of the imagination and as extension of a larger system of thought which attempts to bring a unity out of the fragmentary nature of experience. The objective reality of the mythical or mystical system is not really at issue. To fail to understand the meaning of a term is both to fail to understand the system and to recoil from believing in it, or at least from examining it any further.

Specific meta-languages tend to draw individual speakers into the psychology of their system of meanings. Their "internal logic" becomes ingrained. An obvious example of this in the ordinary world is someone who must learn the jargon of a particular trade — the stock broker, for example. Now let us suppose the stock broker is also in love. He adopts the "lover's discourse"⁸ which is, in turn, made up of the "image-repertoire" (or "stock") of traditional love words and phrases. The individual who is not in love will not necessarily use the language of lovers, just as someone who is not a stock broker will not use the language of an exchange member, although he or she retains that mode of discourse as part of the "langue" (or native tongue). There is also the sense in which falling in love makes one truly understand it for the first time. A participant, then, has a deeper, truer understanding of the meta-language. For example, an ascetic bachelor will not necessarily utter the phrases, "you are adorable," or "I love you," but their meaning will not be unknown to him. What the non-lover lacks may be the emotional resonances, the thrills and tender longings that "I love you" evokes in someone who is in love. However, the general meaning of the words "I love you" is no enigma to him; he can define a locus of connotations that bring sense to the words: an partnership of mutual dependency, an exchange of kisses, or a joining together in sexual relations, and these may be imaginatively projected as the context. In the case of the stock broker, his perspective on the business on the exchange floor is different from that of the specialist in economic theory. They both rely to some extent on the same "image repertoire," but the connotative chain will differ for a term such as, for example, "profit and loss." To the broker, it may mean life or death, getting paid or not getting paid, but to an economist the expression may appear as abstracted academic data on a bar graph, and in no way tied to these connotations.

Similarly, only the mystic can savor the connotative richness of his or her peculiar mode of discourse, but the non-mystic can comprehend the "image repertoire" of the mystic and attempt to see how it all fits together. Ideally, though, the non-mystic should ultimately be persuaded to become a mystic. Blake states in "A Vision of the Last Judgment":

If the Spectator could Enter into these Images in his Imagination approaching them on the Fiery Chariot of his Contemplative Thought if he could Enter into Noahs Rainbow or into his bosom or could make a Friend & Companion of one of these Images of wonder which always intreats him to leave mortal things as he must know then would he arise from his Grave then would he meet the Lord in the Air & then he would be happy (Erdman, p. 550)

Mythic vs. Empirical Thinking

This argument becomes necessary because the implied beneath-the-surface split in human consciousness has existed for generations. It is describable in terms of Ernst Cassirer's division between empirical and mythical consciousness.⁹ But in the modern age the prevailing materialism and the scientific world view have attempted to overwhelm or overthrow mythic thought in much the same way as the Greek philosophers did to the anthropomorphic pagan myths and cult religions. This battle within our collective unconscious is ongoing and is, in fact, probably still evolving. That mythic consciousness has not been extinguished but indeed has held its own ground against the materialist position testifies sufficiently to its "reality." The fact that it exists in such a myriad of forms, from occultist beliefs in gods from outer space to the "mysticism" of today's Zen or transcendental meditation, testifies to the breadth and strength of human imagination. In modern psychobiological terms, the whole issue may really be an ongoing debate between left and right halves of the brain. Because of our acculturation to the materialist and scientific world views, we must absorb a whole semantic system grounded in different epistemological assumptions about what "reality" is and play a part, even if only one of passive observer, in the sign-signified relations between words and some "other" reality. In this terrain, one no longer views the world through the lenses of common sense but instead relies on intuitive or imaginative "image repertoires" of the unseen and the unknown.

Ernst Cassirer defines the division of human consciousness in the terms "analytic" and "mythical," roughly corresponding to the scientific-empirical world view and the visionary world view. Cassirer himself conflates "mystical" with "mythical" world view as I have done here. They are fundamentally the same, implying any intuitively or imaginatively apprehended order comprehended outside but at the same time within the concrete world. Blake, of course, places himself deliberately in the middle of this whole argument, and he concerns himself with the same division of consciousness throughout his mythic writings, but from a vantage opposite from Cassirer's. Blake is mythical man observing and critiquing scientific man, attempting to correct the "errors" of the empirical world view. Through his dramas of the fall of reason away from vision and of the concrete world away from eternity, Blake, like his character Los/Urthona, must spiritually help to rebuild this divided universe back into a unity. Blake's system inevitably re-divides into duality, and from there into multiplicity again and again, just as the world itself does and is. This narrative structure is also the characteristic logical form of Hebrew and Christian thought — the duality of matter and spirit, divided from the ultimate "essence" in eternity. The Christian Trinity is an expression of this very paradox within the world view which claims to unite the duality.

Mythic consciousness, Cassirer says, views and defines itself in relation to concrete objects differently than we of the scientific world order do. Mythical consciousness has entirely different concepts of the object, of causality, of continuity, of differentiation, of perception itself. For example, the relation of part to whole (which the scientific world view takes as a "given") is not distinguished in mythical thought. David Hume's notion that the world is comprised of sequences of causes and effects or a continuous flux of sense "impressions" is likewise alien to mythical consciousness. Myth treats the attributes of objects as identical with the object as a whole and thinks in terms of similarities of sensuous manifestation as expressing oneness with a theoretical (or, more accurately, "felt" or "intuited") whole. Categories of "inward" and "outward," "essential" and "non-essential" do not find realization.

The Duality of Consciousness in Greek Thought

The rift between "ordinary" reality versus "other" reality modes of consciousness and their accompanying languages, or "image repertoires," is also a consequence of a philosophical schism in Western thought. As Cassirer points out, a division among users of language seems to have occurred early in the development of Greek philosophy. Blake seems to identify the same problem:

Twas the Greeks love of war
turned Love into a Boy
And Woman into a Statue of Stone
And away fled every Joy (Erdman, p. 470)

The Stolen and Perverted Writings of Homer & Ovid: of Plato & Cicero which all Men ought to contemn: are set up by artifice against the Sublime of the Bible (Erdman, p. 94)

the Grecian gods were the ancient Cherubim of Phoenicia; but the Greeks, and since them the Moderns, have neglected to subdue the gods of Priam. These Gods are visions of the eternal attributes, or divine names, which, when erected into gods, become destructive to humanity. They ought to be the servants and not the masters of man, or of society. They ought to be made to sacrifice to Man, and not man compelled to sacrifice to them; for when separated from man or humanity, who is Jesus the Saviour, the vine of eternity, they are thieves and rebels, they are destroyers. (Erdman, p. 527)

The Atoms of Democritus
And Newtons Particles of light
Are sands upon the Red sea shore
Where Israels tents do shine so bright (Erdman, p. 469)

The Duality of Consciousness in Ordinary Words

The ordinary language approach merely circumvents the issue of the strangeness of the very existence of the "other" language system and dismisses the problem by denying any "objective reality" to that system. Ordinary language philosophy, in fact, ends up proving only its own presuppositions. When analyzing mystical or mythical language it reasons in a circle, concluding that visions or imaginative personifications are meaningless because they lack empirical referents and simultaneously limiting "objective reality" at the outset to the world of empirical objects. The "meaning" of any myth as such is denied "objective reality" because of the philosopher's presupposition, his acceptance of this as the only "knowable" reality. To borrow a term from logic, the "meaning" becomes the undistributed middle between reason's objective premises and imagination's mythic subjects. The outcome would be a syllogism that does not follow. It would fail to satisfy the rationalist because it breaks the rules of scientific logic, but it is equally unacceptable to the visionary because of the very form in which it tries to frame the discussion.

This perennial dilemma of the "hard-eyed pragmatists" versus the "dreamy-eyed visionaries" may be seen in etymological histories of words of Greek origin. The word "ecstasy," for example, mirrors the division in thought. It is a curious example, since the word as phonic utterance is virtually identical today (in many cognates) in modern western languages to its original Greek. The original meaning of "ekatasis" (’έκστάσις) seems to have been vague, used differently as a term by different writers, but meaning in general "put out of place" and figuratively "beside oneself" applied to states of anxiety, astonishment, fear, or passion.¹³ The word was used in a phrase to mean "to drive a person out of his wits" and hence became applied to insanity. However, post-Classical Greek usage also applies the word to mean "withdrawal of the soul from the body into mystic or prophetic trance." Since Classical times, "ecstasy" has evolved a parallel etymology, used to signify concepts of both madness and religious rapture in modern languages. Its most empirical application is the one we have evolved in today's popular culture, in which it signifies general sensual pleasure, and specifically sexual orgasm (and even more recently the popular name of an hallucinogenic drug).

This example may be reflective of a kind of mythic appropriation, if one believes that the mythical simply seizes ordinary words arbitrarily and imposes "other" meanings on them. This notion, one applied by the empirical world view, is that myth "appropriates" objects and imparts to them arbitrarily the "concept" it attempts to signify.¹⁴ Cassirer argues that the mythic use of language actually preceded the analytical, indicating that the rationalists appropriated the language of the imaginative. However, there is a better argument that the empirical and mythical systems of usage evolved parallel to each other, mutually at odds. The central point is that mystic or mythic writers used words derived from the same "langue" (or general "native tongue" of a culture), but with differentiated senses of meaning, to attempt to describe their spiritual experiences. These patterns of specialized usage seem to occur in every language. The mystic or myth-maker evolves special terms, or designates special concepts with common terms, to signify events or phenomena solely within the province of mystical or mythical experience. The language itself tends to draw one into the psychology of its system of meaning, at the same time as the mystic asserts the meanings of his or her own visions within the language system. As is now known, the phenomenon of religious raptures among monastics and solitary contemplatives can in large part be attributed to their continuous study of and immersion in, their constant "dwelling in," the forms of mystical language. Hence, the language itself creates the expectation of the experience, realized in fairly well-defined "visionary forms" perceived in the mind's eye of the individual.

The Problem with Words Like "Reality"

A word such as "reality" means something entirely different to the visionary than it means to the empiricist. A speaker using the word "reality" to signify only the here and now, the concrete world of matter, time, and phenomena, will seem thick-headed to the mystic whose "reality" is related to some other state of being or consciousness. Vice versa, the rationalist rejects the visionary's other world as unprovable. But the mystic rarely asserts that the material world is not real. Blake makes an explicit analysis of the word in his "A Vision of the Last Judgment: For the Year 1810 Additions to Blake's Catalogue of Pictures &^c":

... when they Assert that Jupiter usurped the Throne of his Father Saturn & brought on an Iron Age & Begat on Mnemosyne or Memory The Greek Muses which are not Inspiration as the Bible is. Reality was Forgot & the Vanities of Time & Space only Rememberd & calld Reality (Erdman, p. 545)

For every thing exists & not one sigh nor smile nor tear,
One hair nor particle of dust, not one can pass away. (Erdman, p. 156)

Paradoxically, once we are truly inside the nature of things we discover, to our amazement, that the essence and the form, the center and the periphery, are actually two sides of the same coin. In the words of a Zen master, 'Before a man studies Zen, mountains are mountains to him, and waters are waters. But when he obtains a glimpse into the truth of Zen through the instructions of a good master, mountains are no longer mountains, waters no longer waters. Later, however, when he has really reached The Place of Rest (I.E. attained satori, enlightenment) the mountains are again mountains and waters are waters.' 'Thus we return to the earth.'¹⁵

Words such as "reality" and their paradoxical senses have always been troubling. The word is vague and non-specific to begin with, although it seems perfectly clear to the materialist, as if given as the most fundamental of premises, that "reality" points to the earth, trees, clouds, etc. To the materialist, mystics merely obfuscate or evade when pressed on the point of what specifically they mean by "reality." It seems unduly vague, so immaterial as to be unmeasurable, not fixatable by any objective instruments, and not observable or apprehended by the physical senses, to refer to some "unseen" or "unknown" higher reality. How can one "know" about this "reality" when it is "unknown"? How can it be simultaneously "unknown" and "real"?

But ultimate reality may or may not be penetrable by human knowledge. The mystic also argues that these "modes of understanding" are like hierarchical levels of being, in which concrete, physical knowledge of the world is the lowest level of human understanding. Blake, like many mystics, actually asserts that anyone can learn to "see" into the higher modes of understanding, literally to see into the mythic and mystic levels of consciousness and being. By asserting both, they are hierarchically arranged by Blake himself according to the perennial wisdom, moving out of sensuous feeling, through reason which inevitably collapses, into emotion which is fraught with the dialectics of wrath and mercy, and finally into the mythic and mystic dimensions of "higher realty," which is in eternity. All these levels exist simultaneously in synchronicity. Mystics see into the higher realms through "vortexes" and for Blake, a vortex is not merely a literary metaphor (although, of course, it is), but it is also a literal way of seeing and furthermore, a model of "reality" itself. In this mode of understanding, the cognitive, or reasoning faculties, as with ordinary, plain-eyesight vision, are valued as less important, certainly problematic and unreliable. The role of "reason" or analysis as the means of attaining the truth is at best dubious.

Blake repeatedly shows characters such as Urizen or Newton "Reasoning & Doubting," and becoming fanatical practitioners of their belief systems, led into the error of making sweeping claims about the nature of empirical "reality." They ultimately become "spectres" of themselves because of their error — parodic cutouts who continually repeat the same phrases and ideas, like today's political pundits who constantly repeat the same lines, wandering from talk show to talk show, always making the same speil, never having anything truly new to say. To the mythic consciousness, non-cognitive attributes — of intuition and imagination, of mythic wonder at the "Sublime" — are more highly valued than sense perception. Perhaps even naked speculation may find a point of breakthrough and become elevated to a higher position of value, as a sign of spontaneous imagination. It does not matter that an idea is empirically unverifiable, or even wrong or inconsistent according to a particular mystic or mythic doctrine. Instead, the emphasis is on the process by means of which one is elevated into one's own intuitive and imaginative faculties. This process, by however means it is achieved, is a value and an end in itself.

Blake prefers not to use the word "reality" much, often choosing instead the term "existence" as opposed to "non-existence" or "non-entity." Blake makes the classic distinction between appearance, or seeming, of the "veil" of reality, versus The Reality itself, which he finds in Eternity. Blake also frequently refers to this physical, empirical "existence" as a "vegetated" or "generated" state. In language, the word "reality" exists analogous to words such as "society" or "language" which are "nowhere all present at once, nowhere taking the form of an object or substance, and yet making their existence felt at every moment of our thought."¹⁶ The rift of consciousness that characterizes the materialist-mythic opposition often takes the form of a presence-absence dialectic as well. The materialist thinks in terms of presence, believes in the concrete, whereas the mystic perceives absences, non-concrete manifestations — the "here and now" as opposed to the "there" for locating reality. To put it another way, the materialist limits his understanding to sensory perceptions of the temporal, material world and his cognitive evaluation of them. But the mystic posits, by an act of intuition and imagination, the "unseen" world of energies and forms behind or beyond this world, existing outside time and space, and its "unknown" presence signifying itself to us and actually manifesting itself at times to our non-cognitive "senses." In no way does the mystic totally reject nature, nor does Blake. For all the images of horror of the material world that one finds in The Book of Urizen, The Four Zoas, or Jerusalem, one can find as many of the world as a natural paradise.

It is certainly clear that Blake would like to point us in the direction of rebuilding the fallen material world to the state of "Beulah," or in moments of vision even return it to the state of "Eden." Both of these terms, and I emphasize "terms," have special senses in Blake. Beulah is the Eden seen in Genesis of the Bible, the "Garden of Eden," or earthly paradise. Blake, however, reserves Eden to define a state that is reached only through vision, analogous to the mystic's "vision of light" in which he fuses with the eternal or with Godhead. Blake extends the analogy to include all the senses: his "visionary forms dramatic" describes literally a synaesthetic state, much as he represents in his artworks.

And they conversed together in Visionary forms dramatic which bright
Redounded from their Tongues in thunderous majesty, in Visions
In new Expanses, creating examplars of Memory and of Intellect
Creating Space, Creating Time according to the wonders Divine
Of Human Imagination, throughout all the Three Regions immense
Of Childhood, Manhood & Old Age[;] & the all tremendous unfathomable Non Ens
Of Death was seen in regenerations terrific or complacent varying
According to the subject of discourse & every Word & Every Character
Was Human according to the Expansion or Contraction, the Translucence or
Opakeness of Nervous fibres such was the variation of Time & Space
Which vary according as the Organs of Perception vary & they walked
To & fro in Eternity as One Man reflecting each in each & clearly seen
And seeing: according to fitness & order. (Erdman, p. 255)

Some Characteristics of Mythic Language

In attempting to evoke all these higher states of reality, the mystic's language appeals to the senses of wonder, awe, and astonishment, and evokes images of grandeur, power, and beauty beyond mankind's ordinary lot. Vision is attained by means of a breakthrough (epiphany) in one's vision of time and space into Eternity. The relationship among these parts is symbolized by a series of philosophical metaphors that Blake evokes again and again: an "Atom of Space" that widens out into "Eternity," and united by a "Globe of Blood." This is one form that the vortex takes. Here, of course, an "Atom" is the material manifestation, the "Globe of Blood" signifies life itself, while "Eternity" is and must necessarily be a projection of the imagination. The metaphor takes the form of a cone shape, in which the "Atom" is the apex or smallest point and "Eternity" is the base, the widest projection — and this shape is characeristically referred to by another "technical term" in Blake, the "vortex." The vortex spirals out of a point infinitely small (the Atom of Space) and is continually "becoming" (in the form of the Globe of Blood "contracting" and "expanding" through the vortex) in the direction of Eternity. Between the two absolutes, Atom and Eternity, we all exist, and this state is what we all know as life, or "reality." The non-cognitive appeal of this system should be strongly apparent, even though reason is never totally rejected. In Blake's mythology, reason is "rehabilitated" and itself becomes a vehicle for attaining a vision of Eternity. But over and over again, it will be shown by Blake's fallen characters, any rational attempt to analyze the universe for its cognitive content will be frustrated and doomed to fail.

Contraries vs. Negations

Some characteristics of mythical language structures can be isolated and noted. Mythic and mystic languages have riddling tendences, in which concealment of meaning can play as great a part of the process as revelation. Mythic and mystic language sometimes defines by negation (such as the constructions seen at the beginning of this section, both x and not-x, and the fusion of x and a contrary or antithetical form y). The mythic mode of thought relies on "absence" in fact to define its "presence" (because the higher "reality" of Eternity is not perceivable in the "here and now"). That statement is another paradox, which as a figurative element always dominates mythic and mystic language. Many times, Blake asserts that "Contraries are not Negations," nowhere more explicitly so than in the first book of Jerusalem:

Negations are not Contraries: Contraries mutually Exist:
But Negations Exist Not: Exceptions & Objections & Unbeliefs
Exist not: nor shall they ever be Organized for ever & ever:
If thou separate from me, thou are a Negation: a meer
Reasoning & Derogation from me, an Objecting & cruel Spite
And Malice & Envy: but my Emanation, Alas! will become
My Contrary: O thou Negation, I will continually compell
Thee to be invisible to any but whom I please, & when
And where & how I please, and never! never! shalt thou be Organized
But as a distorted & reversed Reflexion in the Darkness
And in the Non Entity: nor shall that which is above
Ever descend into thee: but thou shalt be a Non Entity for ever
And if any enter into thee, thou shalt be an Unquenchable Fire
And he shall be a never dying Worm, mutually tormented by
Those that thou tormentest, a Hell & Despair for ever & ever.
                     (Erdman, pp. 160-161)

Mythic causality, naming, spiritualization, and hypostatization

Some other attributes of mythic language are summarized here, based again on Cassirer's analysis of mythical thought in the second volume of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms:¹⁷

Blake's use of mythic naming and vocabulary

In subsequent sections on Blake's naming system, I will return to many of these points again and again. Particularly important are two of these points. 1) Blake's system of names operates almost entirely on values and connotations in which each character governs, contains, or operates within, a specific realm of being defined by a locus of etymologically related word forms. 2) Blake applies specific terminology from the language of myth and mysticism, such as for example "emanation," to his own purposes, but uses them consistently within the historical definitions given both in philosophy and religion. This holds true for other terms, such as "vortex," "vision," "entity/non-entity," "eternity," "negation," and so on.

The example of Emanation

Blake uses the term "emanation" most frequently to refer to the "female" counterparts to his various male "zoas" or beings. For each male being, there is a corresponding female "other" who splits away from the original unified male/female being. Blake differs from the historical definition of "emanation" only slightly here. In Biblical thought, the whole universe and all the beings in it are understood to be "emantions" from Godhead, called in Hebrew the Sephiroth. A more standard definition (following the OED) points to its literal etymological meaning of "flowing forth," "issuing from," or "originating with" a person or thing as a source, used chiefly of immaterial things, qualities, laws, principles, and courses of action. In a physical sense, it has the same meaning, "to flow forth from" or "issue from" a material source but is used chiefly in reference to intangible things such as light, gas, or an effusion of some sort. Figuratively, "emanation" is often applied to the origination of created beings from God, chiefly with reference to theories that regard either the universe as a whole, or the spiritual part of it, as deriving existence from the essence of God, and not from an act of creation ex nihilo. This is the sense as it is applied in Neo-Platonism. In theology, the doctrine of "emanism" was used to denote the "generation of the Son and the procession of the Holy Spirit" as distinguished from the origination of merely created beings. This usage more narrowly expresses the doctrine of "emanation" as applying to the special cases of only Jesus and the Holy Spirit. However, within Blake's system of thought, it is entirely consistent, since as he sees it "all things are divine." In the later prophetic books, Blake also applies "emanation" to refer to forces and principles such as the Spectres and Shadows, which themselves can generate emanations. Blake does consistently follow a like distinction between "emanation" as existing spiritually and perceived in imagination, and "creation," which involves a materialization of physical form, such as generation of children or the building of the material universe.

The problem of the Ineffable

Only by resorting to frequent paradoxes ourselves can we end up grasping how this language construct operates, how it "means"; such is the force with which a language system draws one into its "power field," so to speak, or to fall back again to Barthes' phrase, its "image repertoire." However, when the reader actually attains "Wisdom" or "Vision" — meaning that higher state of consciousness — the Absolute Other is encountered, and this experience is "ineffable." To someone of the materialist inclination, the resort to the ineffable is perhaps the most annoying feature of mystic or mythic language. The tactic seems fallacious, a "cop out" from the argument or a refusal to define one's terms — perhaps, the materialist suspects, because they are mere chimeras. The resort to ineffability asserts, "We are now reaching into terrain of the mind for which there are no words" and also "for which we can conceive no words." We either have not thought up the proper words or images to express it yet, or perhaps the experience is so intense as to be beyond expressibility. Rhetorically this is a challenge, a provocation to cease discourse and to refer the listener's mind to its own inner world. It asserts that its meaning can be found opening into the unknown, imaginative reality that we all know exists within ourselves; we all know this because we dream and because we constantly generate imaginary beings and fantasy worlds — dragons and devils, Jehovahs and Krishnas, gods from outer space and science fiction universes. Thus, to a mystic, the resort to ineffability is not a true withdrawal from the argument, but rather a plea to enter the argument on its real terms. Both Eastern and Western mysticism characterize the state of visionary contemplation of the infinite or Eternal in terms of casting off attributes of selfhood, attaining a state of absolute passive rest, tranquility, and peace, and a detached state of total bliss, or "nirvana." This passive state, of course, runs contrary to the materialist's proposition, which derives knowledge through dialectic and syllogism, experimentally proving, documenting ones claims, and verifying by repetition the work of others. Blake's vision of the state he calls "visionary forms dramatic" is atypically full of activity, in visionary terms, and may be an attempt to stay away from the problem of the ineffable, keeping the visionary experience within human terms. Thus, Blake's expression of the ultimate eternal unity is to say that all the Eternals with all their eternal attributes unite in Jesus, in imagination.

It goes without saying that when a speaker stops speaking, he or she does not necessarily stop communicating. We still have resort to "dramatics," or the language of the body. A person may, even with the materialist's permission, say in ordinary language, "We can't talk about this any more," but not be cutting off discussion at all. A wife who is angry at her husband may refuse to argue any further, and this may be interpreted to mean that she wishes to postpone discussion, or that she wants it to take place in different terms — they may go to bed and resolve the argument using their bodies. A teacher uttering the same phrase to a student at the end of class may be merely out of time and in need of moving on to the next class. They may resume the same discussion exactly where they left off later. However, this certainly does not necessarily mean that in cutting off discussion someone is attempting to conceal something. On this point, materialists and mystics frequently clash, because the mythic consciousness is accused of willful obscurity. The resort to ineffability appears to be the final in a series of progressively widening inductive leaps, a succession of greater and greater nonsense language culminating with a disappearance into a rabbit hole of silence. We have seen that myth often invites this criticism upon itself by assuming cryptic stances, or riddling with ideas and symbols almost heaped together, rather than organizing and explaining them. The rationalist position, on the other hand, must ask itself what motivates this mode of signification: why do myths express themselves the way they do and why does human consciousness around the world produce myths? Moreover, why is there all too often a mysterious connection between "eccentric" imagination and empirical reality?

Two Kinds of Vision

Blake might answer the latter question by in some way indicating that "Vision" manages to synthesize the two, to bring the understanding then to a higher perception of the whole, or the underlying unity. In Blake's mythology, there are two kinds of vision: reason's vision — the vegetated eye; and imagination's vision — the opening up of a vortex into eternity, like the opening of a camera lens or the dilation of an eye. Defining vision in this way posits a very basic kind of classical opposition, a kind of shorthand almost as easily written as the sign implied in capitalizing the "V." "Vision" is another paradoxical perplex, one which contains a presence and an absence — the perceiver and the thing seen — and rhetorically it amplifies upon the possibilities of taking two things that are the "same" and establishing a difference between them, almost as a kind of paradox in reverse. This is because it is clear that to the mystic, striving for the higher state of consciousness, vision and Vision are one and the same, even though our dualistic universe (this world) forces us to create a distinction. Such is the "fallen" or "vegetated" state in Blake. A "Vision" has a long accepted meaning of "something seen not by plain eyesight" — in fact, in English, as the earliest written uses of the word — as well as the common meaning of "the action of seeing with the bodily eye."¹⁸ Nowhere is the paradox seen so clearly: in a word which contains simultaneously opposite meanings, referring to something both seen and not seen.

Blake continually wrestles with this seeming inherent dualism, and ultimately "because Contraries are not Negations" he must reconcile the opposition. Put another way, "the mystic claims that unless conscious contact with the Unitive Center of a thing is experienced, we only observe the semblance of its Reality."¹⁹ Thus, the problem becomes one of defining a difference between "partially seeing" and "seeing unitively," or again in the Classical distinction, of perceiving both "appearances" and "Reality." The following passage from Plotinus' Fifth Ennead, 8, strongly resembles Blake's approach to this dualism:

They see all not in process of becoming but in Being, and they see themselves in the other. Each Being contains within itself the whole intelligible world. Therefore all is everywhere. Each is there all and all is each.
Man as he now is has ceased to be the All. But when he ceases to be an individual he raises himself again and penetrates the whole world. Then, become one with the All, he creates the All.²⁰

It looks upon the world of things in its multiplicity, and in contrast to this leaps to an "intuition" or a "knowledge" of its most peculiar kind, which we according to our scale of values, may consider either a strange fantasy or a glimpse into the eternal relationships of things.²¹

This vision we must call "unifying vision" or "vision of a unity," for unity is its watchword — not soul, nor inward man, nor atman, nor Brahman, nor deitas, neither sat nor esse, but "Unity." The emphasis on unity, and the struggle against all diversity, is its chief characteristic.²²

In some sense, then, true "Vision" must always begin with the material world but must "expand" in "imagination." Blake's cryptic little lyric, deceptively simple, called "Eternity," describes this process in terms of an emotional response:

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as if flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise (Erdman, p. 461)

This does not mean that all things in the fullness and richness of their individual being disappear, but rather that each with each and all with all is identical — one and the same.²³

The Problem with Reason and Generalization

Harmony and Proportion are Qualities & Not Things The Harmony & Proportion of a Horse are not the same with those of a Bull Every Thing has its own Harmony & Proportion Two Inferior Qualities in it for in Reality is Its Imaginative Form (Erdman, p. 653)

It is not in Terms that Reynolds & I disagree Two Contrary Opinions can never by any Language be made alike... the Fault is not in Words. but in Things Lockes Opinions of Words & their Fallaciousness are Artful Opinions & Fallacious also (Erdman, p. 648)

Demonstration Similitude & Harmony are Objects of Reasoning Invention Identity & Melody are Objects of Intuition (Erdman, p. 648)

Reason or A Ratio of All We have Known is not the same [i.e., "invariable"] it shall be when we know More (Erdman, p. 649)

This results in the peculiar logic of mysticism, which discounts the two fundamental laws of natural logic: the law of Contradiction and of the Excluded Third. As non-Euclidian geometry sets aside the axiom of parallels so mystical logic disregards these two axioms; and thence the "coincidentia oppositorum," the "identity of opposites" and the "dialectic conceptions" arise.²⁴

I read in the Oracle & True Briton of Oct^r 13, 1807—that a M^r Blair a Surgeon has with the Cold fury of Robespierre caused the Police to sieze upon the Person & Goods or Property of an Astrologer & to commit him to Prison. The Man who can Read the Stars. often is opressed by their Influence, no less than the Newtonian who reads Not & cannot Read is opressed by his own Reasonings & Experiments. We are all subject to Error: Who shall say < except the Natural Religionists > that we are not all subject to Crime (Erdman, p. 706)

"Visio sub specie aeterni"; that is, not only the negation of the usual association of things together in space and time, but a positive ordering of their existence in and with one another in a higher but inexpressible way in the eternal "Now."²⁵

The Vortex as a Vehicle of Mythic Vision

Vision is a way of seeing in Blake's mythology. It is also a mode of feeling, so that a "joy" on this earth also has a vortex outward into eternity, where some similar corresponding joy is felt, for the duality of subject and object is suddenly broken in the moment of epiphany:

He who has allowed the beauty of that world (seen in ideal unity) to penetrate his soul goes away no longer a mere observer. For the object perceived and the perceiving soul are no longer two things separated from one another, but the perceiving soul has (now) within itself the perceived object.²⁶

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour (Erdman, p. 481)

Accompanying the epiphanic breakthrough of Vision, the mystic finds joining in the:

unification of things is what we may call their "transfiguration." They become transparent, luminous, visionary. They are seen — and this relates to their perception sub specie aeterni — "in ratione ydeali" as Eckart puts it, that is, not in their "obviousness" but in their eternal idea.²⁷

Thus the essence of the Deity is everywhere in the deep of the unground, like as a wheel or eye, where the beginning hath always the end; and there is no place found for it, for it is itself the place of all beings and the fulness of all things, and yet is apprehended or seen by nothing. For it is an eye in itself, as Ezekial the prophet saw this in a figure at the introduction of the spirit of his will into the wisdom of God by the Spirit of God; there he attained the vision, and in no other way can that be.²⁸

The nature of infinity is this: That every thing has its
Own Vortex; and when once a traveller thro' Eternity
Has passd that Vortex, he perceives it roll backward behind
His path into a globe itself infolding; like a sun:
Or like a moon, or like a universe of starry majesty,
While he keeps onwards in his wondrous journey on the earth
Or like a human form, a friend with whom he livd benevolent.
As the eye of man views both the east & west encompassing
Its vortex; and the north & south, with all their starry host;
Also the rising sun & setting moon he views surrounding
His corn-fields and his valleys of five hundred acres square.
Thus is the earth one infinite plane, and not as apparent
To the weak traveller confin'd beneath the moony shade.
Thus is the heaven a vortex passd already, and the earth
A vortex not yet pass'd by the traveller thro' Eternity. (Erdman, p. 108)

Curiously, in Blake, not every vortex need be a sphere, though it is usually geometrical in its form. Several of Blake's paintings show a rectangular vortex passageway — Queen Mab or A Vision, for examples, where its contextual language suggests "Druidical religion" or the classical doorway in Blake's mythology. In Queen Mab the vision of the fairies unfolds behind the "traveler through eternity," who is entering a passageway that generates the vortex of his visionary perception. From the dialectic of images, the language of this Vision represents that of "Druidical Religion," and the mythical domination of sprites in opposition. The Egyptian pyramid would also seem to fit within this classical dialectic paradigm, which Blake equates with the ancient world's falling away from the inspiration of the Bible.

The Vortex as Model of "Four-Fold Vision"

Examine closely the perspective of the De Antro Nympherum canvas shown below. This painting closely approximates what one might experience during a visionary experience. The perceiver, or narrative perspective of the scene, is meant to be Ulysses himself, the bearded figure within the canvas, left of center. The vision breaks open all around him, literally begins "in eternity" above him, proceeds through allegorical stages of the fall, as the eye follows from left to right, and resolves in the material reality literally sweeping around behind and beneath the figure of Ulysses, even under the earth. The vision is intimately connected to its material world bearings by the foot:

De Antro Nympherum, by William Blake, 1821

And there it meets Eternity again, both within and without,
And the abstract Voids between the Stars are the Satanic Wheels.

There is the Cave; the Rock, the Tree, the Lake of Udan Adan;
The Forest, and the Marsh, and the Pits of bitument deadly (Erdman, p. 156)

The Problem of Poetic Allusion Revisited

The scene of De Antro Nympherum is thought to contain references to two passages of Homer's Odyssey, in Books V and XIII, which describe the same "cave of the Nymphs of the Wellsprings." It essentially conflates two episodes, one in which Ulysses is saved from drowning by Leucothia (literally "White Goddess"), before being washed ashore on the island of the Phaiakians. The second episode occurs after his arrival home in Ithaka, when he is protected by Athena, who takes him to the cave of the Nymphs of the Wellsprings. Here are the two passages:

The daughter of Kadmos, sweet-stepping Ino called Leukothea,
saw him. She had once been one who spoke as a mortal,
but now in the gulfs of the sea she holds degree as a goddess.
She took pity on Odysseus as he drifted and suffered hardship,
and likening herself to a winged gannet she came up
out of the water and perched on the raft and spoke a word to him:...
'And here, take this veil, it is immortal, and fasten it under
your chest; and there is no need for you to die, nor to suffer.
But when with both your hands you have taken hold of the mainland,
untie the veil and throw if out in the wine-blue water
far from the land; and turn your face away as you do so.'    (Book V)

There is a harbor of the Old Man of the Sea, Phorkys,
in the countryside of Ithaka. There two precipitous
promontories opposed jut out, to close in the harbor...
At the head of the harbor, there is an olive tree with spreading
leaves, and nearby is a cave that is shaded, and pleasant,
and sacred to the nymphs who are called the Nymphs of the Wellsprings,
Naiads. There are mixing bowls and handled jars inside it,
all of stone, and there the bees deposit their honey.
And therein also are looms that are made of stone, very long, where
the nymphs weave their sea-purple webs, a wonder to look on;
and there is water forever flowing. It has two entrances,
one of them facing the North Wind, where people can enter,
but the one toward the South Wind has more divinity. That is
the way of the immortals, and no men enter by that way.     (Book XIII)

Then in turn the goddess gray-eyed Athene answered him:...
'Come, I will show you settled Ithaka, so you will believe me.
This is the harbor of the Old Man of the Sea, Phorkys,
and here at the head of the harbor is the olive tree with spreading
leaves, and nearby is the cave that is shaded, and pleasant,
and sacred to the nymphs who are called the Nymphs of the Wellsprings,
Naiads. That is the wide over-arching cave, where often
you used to accomplish for the nymphs their complete hecatombs;
and there is the mountain, Neritos, all covered with forest.'
   So speaking the goddess scattered the mist, and the land was visible.
Long-suffering great Odysseus was gladdened then, rejoicing
in the sight of his country, and kissed the grain-giving ground, then
raised his hands in the air and spoke to the nymphs, praying:
'Naiad nymphs, O daughters of Zeus, I never suspected
that I would see you again. Be welcome now to my gentle
prayers, but I will also give you gifts, as I used to
before, if Athene the Spoiler, Zeus' daughter, freely grants me
to go on living here myself, and sustains my dear son.'    (Book XIII)²⁹

Poetic and Mythic Language translated into the medium of Painting

And Leutha stood glowing with varying colours immortal, heart-piercing
And lovely: & her moth-like elegance shone over the Assembly
At length standing upon the golden floor of Palamabron
She spake: I am the Author of this Sin! ...
Cupidity unconquerable! my fault, when at noon of day
The Horses of Palamabron call'd for rest and pleasant death:
I sprang out of the breast of Satan, over the Harrow beaming
In all my beauty! that I might unloose the flaming steeds
As Elynittria use'd to do; but too well those living creatures
Knew that I was not Elynittria, and they brake the traces.
                      Erdman, pp. 104-105.

"Four-fold Vision" vs. Naturalistic Perspective

In the De Antro Nympherum painting, Leucothia, the sea nymph riding on a chariot drawn by sea horses is the "vortex" of Ulysses' perception of the whole unfolding scene. The vision of the sun's chariot and horses being unbridled by four women rises above and behind both figures, Ulysses and Leucothia, from a "naturalistic" perspective. The vision unfolds in the characteristic conic configuration of the vortex and then proceeds around to the right side of the canvas, and both down from the figurative sky and behind Ulysses, who must be taken as the "perceiver" within this vision. Ulysses, like Blake's "traveler through Eternity," perceives the whole vision through myth and mythic consciousness; that is, he focuses, perceives, imagines, and then sees the vision through the sea nymph, Leucothia, a mythical creature, and his vision unfolds as she is the object of his vortex. The vision must be conceived stereoscopically: If we really were Ulysses in Blake's painting, we would see both (1) the sea nymph and the vortex of vision in a cone projecting above and behind her, and (2) proceeding from that a panoramic, 360° perspective "all-at-once-seen" vision that literally reaches all directions around us, above and below us, creeping under our toes. Completely antithetical to the "naturalistic" perspective, we have to imagine that all directions are seen at once. Blake insists upon it. It is what he means when he uses the term "four-fold vision." It must be also emphasized that this form of vision finds its realization in imagination.

One way to analogize this "four-fold vision" is to say it is somewhat like the concept of a hologram but inside out. When one looks at a hologram, it is in an analogous way to looking at a three-dimensional sculpture, as it confronts the bodily eye's vision. To see from the inside out, one must assume the perspectival form of the hologram, and look outward from it in all directions at once. That may seem hard to do and it is. Yet another analogy may be made with contemporary versions of 360° perspective that have been achieved through different technologies. (One of them is the "iPIX" photograph, using a fisheye lens, in which two photos are taken, each one encompassing a 180° perspective in such a manner as they face directly opposite directions — if one aims the first photo directly north, the second should be directly south, and so on. The resulting images are stitched together by using a mathematical algorithm so that the two 180° perspective images form one continuous 360° perspective panorama. The fundamental limitation of this technology is that only a small portion of the panorama can be viewed at any one time, and one must control the pan and tilt of the central "camera's eye" position by means of rotation tools.) Of course all "analogies" in descriptive language fall short of truly describing the visionary experience. But Blake asserts that we all have this faculty latent within us, that it can be learned by practice, and that it provides the fundamental basis for mythical as well as mystical seeing.

There are many other aspects of "four-fold vision" that ought to be better defined. When the vortex sweeps behind you, it is accompanied by a rush of feeling almost like a wind passing though you, and a definite "knowledge" or sense of enlightenment is felt to be imparted — simultaneously from without and within — that is, a Visionary perspective on the nature of some eternal truth or some other "reality." This is not always a good feeling, because the vision that is unfolded may turn out to be dark and terrible. In the De Antro Nympherum painting, Ulysses certainly appears somewhat unsettled. In the moment that is pictured, that of his throwing the "girdle" of Leucothia back to her, at the same time looking away, Blake also sees a moral allegory of choices between death and life. Ulysses seems almost on the verge of diving back into the water to rejoin Leucothia the myth, rather than to remain in the world of endless generation depicted to his right; moreover, we see in his earthly vision bodies of people lying buried under the ground, presumably dead or in Hades in their spectrous afterlife. But in the center of the picture, the figure of the goddess Athena seems to beckon to Ulysses that there is a choice, and it is pointed toward "Vision," or upward into the eternal. At the top of her palm, the "veil" of the material reality dissolves, and purely mythic vision is seen rising in the air above.

Cultural Context in Visionary Experience

In different experiences, the vortex of a fiery thing can come at you "like a sun" — a visionary metaphor that Blake uses frequently in all of his prophetic books. If experienced passively, truly in a state in which both subject and object interpenetrate each other's being, then the vortex can widen into a vision of the whole "universe of starry majesty," which as Blake states is contained in each and every minute particular, within each "grain of sand," and within each "atom of space." The character, cultural, and environmental context of the subject object go into determining the nature of the vision that is experienced. Thus, if the perceiver in the painting (or book) is Job, he will generate a certain vortex, to which his "vision" corresponds. That is why Elijah's Vision of the Elohim in Blake's painting is of the Elohim and not some other god like Zeus; and of course, why Ulysses' vision is of Leucothia and Athena in the De Antro Nympherum painting. This observation may seem obvious, except when one examines the self-evident quality of the assertion. As stated earlier, psychologists who have studied the phenomenon of religious raptures among monastics and solitary contemplatives attribute their visions to their continuous study of and immersion in, their constant "dwelling in," the forms of mystical language. Thus the mysticism produced in a work such as The Book of Enoch known to us from Old Church Slavonic scribes working in monestaries differs from that found in Teresa of Avila within the Roman Catholic tradition, and from the visions of ineffable light found in the Buddhist mysticism of the Upanishads. Different still from all of these is the experience described by the Greek Sibyl, who is now known to have induced mystical trance by breathing the intoxicating fumes of a volcanic fissure beneath the oracle chamber at Delphi. The distinction is certainly not lost on Blake, who carefully observes the cultural context of all his visionary illustrations, but occasionally mixes up all his deities together, as in the Sunshine Holiday painting. Elijah's vision is of the Elohim and not some other God precisely because he was culturally conditioned as a Hebrew in times before Christ — truly a dark and terrifying time in Blake's understanding of the biblical myth of creation of a people and a nation, but not without its moments of breakthrough back into true vision. Blake feels comfortable mixing up his own mythologies occasionally precisely because he lives in a time in which a much wider understanding of many different religious traditions and mythological systems conditions his vision.

Annotatia

All citations of works by William Blake are to David V. Erdman, ed., The Poetry and Prose of William Blake, New York: Doubleday, 1970. Notes after the text quoted cited in parentheses as "Erdman" by page number in that edition.

¹ Jacob Boehme, Six Theosophic Points, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1971, pages 10, 11, 19.

² A fusion of the words of Mary Austin and Baron von Hügel for this example, is found in Rufus Matthew Jones, Pathways to the Reality of God, Chapter 2, New York: Macmillan, 1931.

³ Ludwig Wittgenstein calls this an "analysis of our forms of expression." See G. E. M. Anscombe, translator, Philosophical Investigations, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958, p. 90.

⁴ For example, Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion, London and New York: Methuen, 1981, p. 42. "The topography, themes, and myths of the fantastic all work together to suggest this movement towards a realm of non-signification, towards a zero point of non-meaning. The represented world of the fantastic is of a different kind from the imagined universe of the marvellous and it opposes the latter's rich, colourful fullness with relatively bleak, empty, indeterminate landscapes, which are less definable as places than as spaces, as white, grey, or shady blanknesses." See also p. 45, "Unlike marvellous secondary worlds, which construct alternative realities, the shady worlds of the fantastic construct nothing. They are empty, emptying, dissolving. Their emptiness vitiates a full, rounded, three-dimensional visible world, by tracing in absences shadows without objects. Far from fulfilling desire, these spaces perpetuate desire by insisting upon absence, lack, the non-seen, the unseeable."

⁵ Robert F. Gleckner, "Blake's Verbal Technique," in William Blake: Essays for S. Foster Damon, ed. A. H. Rosenfeld, Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1969, pp. 321, 480 (notes). "The virtually untranslatable imaginative density... can be illustrated by... 'Dark, revolving in silent activity.' It also means: 'Silent, revolving in dark activity' and 'Dark, silent, in revolving activity,' and 'Active, in dark, silent revolutions.' ...The permutations of the adjectives, verbs and phrasal and clausal constructions creates a graphic grammatical conflict." I would add, this points out the circularity of the diction as well as its self-enclosed usage within the meta-languages of both poetic and mythological imagination.

⁶ Noted in Alicia Ostriker, Vision and Verse in William Blake, Madison and Wilwaukee: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965, p. 127. Other interesting examples from later books are "Rock of Eternity," "Furnaces of affliction," and "Tree of Mystery."

⁷ The fact that readers are not bound by either context or poetic conventions is often lost to poets. Frequently readers can be led into elaborate mis-readings of poetry by lacking the proper context. One example that comes to mind was a woman reading a poem who interpreted an image of "birds flying up" into the air as symbolic of sexual orgasm. She then constructed an elaborate model to explain the rest of the poem in these terms. Readers can be naive, ignorant, misled by ideologies or religious beliefs, and prejudiced in ways that can completely blind them to the simplest imagery.

⁸ Some of the terms in this section derive from Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments, translated by Richard Howard, New York: Hill and Wang, 1981.

⁹ The argument is fully developed in Ernst Cassirer's, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume 2: Mythical Thought translated by Ralph Manheim, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1955.

¹⁰ Cassirer, ibid., p. xiii.

¹¹ Ibid., p. xiv.

¹² Ibid., p. 47.

¹³ Oxford English Dictionary, Compact Edition.

¹⁴ Roland Barthes, Mythologies, translated by Annette Lavers, New York: Hill and Wang, 1980. In the chapter on "Myth Today" (pp. 131-137) Barthes describes myth as "stolen language." He believes that "language lends itself to myth" (p. 132), and that, "a voluntary acceptance of myth can in fact define the whole of our traditional Literature" (p. 134).

¹⁵ Norman Winski, Mysticism for the Millions, Los Angeles: Sherbourne Press, Inc., 1965, p. 46.

¹⁶ Fredric Jameson, The Prison-House of Language, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972, p. 24.

¹⁷ See Ernst Cassirer's, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume 2: Mythical Thought pages 29-82.

¹⁸ Oxford English Dictionary, Compact Edition.

¹⁹ Winski, pp. 43-44.

²⁰ Quoted in Rudolf Otto, Mysticism East and West, New York: Macmillan, 1932, pp. 60-61. Otto is sometimes brilliantly lucid and at other times he commits the literary critical fallacy of merely repeating redundantly the language he hopes to explain. That is, he does what Bloom, Frye, Ault and many others do, which is to "slip into" use of the language by means of a somewhat elusive use of paraphrase. Thus, they end up trying (1) to explain one perplexing concept in terms of another; and (2) to describe the mythical language system by fiat or by demonstration, that is, simply by using variants of the same language in their exegesis.

²¹ Ibid.

²² Ibid.

²³ Ibid, p. 63.

²⁴ Ibid, p. 64.

²⁵ Ibid, p. 65.

²⁶ Ibid.

²⁷ Ibid.

²⁸ Boehme, Six Theosophic Points, pp. 9-10. The image of the eye actually occurs from the very beginning of the book and is fully extrapolated in this ending paragraph of "The First Text." Blake's visionary painting of "Ezekial's Vision" (1800-1805) illustrates his understanding of the concept that Boehme describes of "Ezekials wheels," as does the later "Beatrice Addressing Dante from the Car" (1824-1827), part of the Dante series of illustrations, as the wheels on the chariot made up of the eyes of cherubim.

²⁹ Homer, The Odyssey, translated by Richmond Lattimore, New York: Harper & Row, 1968, pages 97, 200-201, and 206-207. I preferred this version to using the edition of George Chapman's folio translation of the Odyssey (1614-1616), which is probably the translation with which Blake was familiar. In terms of the overall meaning, the texts do not differ greatly, but in individual words there are many variants. For example, the form to which Ino-Leucothia is compared as she approaches, 'a winged gannet,' is in Chapman 'a cormorant' (line 437); also, the passage which Lattimore translates as an 'immortal veil' which Ulysses is instructed to tie around his chest, Chapman renders as:

'Take here this tablet, with this riband strung,
And see it still about thy bosom hung;
By whose eternal virtue never fear
To suffer thus again, nor perish here.' (Lines 449-453)

³⁰ Kathleen Raine, .