MERLIN: Legendary magician and prophet at King Arthur’s court, ultimately betrayed by his mistress.
MIDIAN: A desert region south of MOAB, whose daughters tempted the Israelites during their wanderings.
MILTON, JOHN: 1608–74. English poet; B.’s most immediate model. Note the following correspondences between works of Milton and works of B. which treat similar themes:
MILTON
BLAKE
L’Allegro and Il Penseroso
Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Lycidas
Thel
Comus
Visions of the Daughters of Albion
Political Tracts
French Revolution, America
Nativity Ode
Europe
On Christian Doctrine
Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Paradise Lost
Four Zoas
Paradise Regained
Milton
History of Britain
Jerusalem
MOAB: Heathen nation east of Palestine, whose daughters tempted the wandering Israelites. Worshippers of the god Chemosh. Commonly coupled in B. with AMALEK and CANAAN.
MOLECH: Ammonite deity worshipped by burning children alive. See SEVEN EYES OF GOD.
MOSES: Leader of the Exodus from Egypt, promulgator of God’s law from Mt Sinai; supposed author of the Pentateuch. See TWENTY-SEVEN CHURCHES.
MUNDANE EGG: The material world of time and space which Man inhabits like an incubating bird. It is surrounded by the MUNDANE SHELL.
MUNDANE SHELL: The visible sky above and around Man. It is an incrustation of Error, which contains the forty-eight constellations and twelve signs of the zodiac, the twelve gods of Asia and the twenty-seven opaque layers of heavens and their churches (official Judeo-Christianity). It is a mirror of our perishing world. Chaos surrounds it, and beyond Chaos, Eternity. Immortals can descend through it, but mortals cannot ascend. The SEVEN EYES OF GOD are guardians throughout it. See also TWENTY-SEVEN CHURCHES.
MYSTERY: Blake’s term for all State religion, which by definition separates Man from God. Its two symbols are a multiply-enrooting tree (of Good and Evil, and of Crucifixion), and a great whore created from the tree’s fruit. See BABYLON; RAHAB; TREE OF MYSTERY.
NAPHTALI: See ISRAEL, SONS OF.
NATURAL RELIGION: Any worship of nature instead of divine humanity; any religion which dispenses with revelation.
NEWTON, SIR ISAAC: 1642–1727. Greatest of English physicists; inventor of calculus; founder of the laws of dynamics. ‘Bacon, Newton & Locke’ constitute B.’s false trinity of English rationalists.
NIMROD: Legendary first king; founder of the Babylonian Empire; builder of the Tower of Babel; traditionally a ‘hunter of men’.
NOAH: Biblical patriarch who survived the Flood and fathered the subsequent races of mankind. See TWENTY-SEVEN CHURCHES.
NOAH (female): See TIRZAH.
NOBODADDY: Daddy Nobody, B.’s coinage for God the Father.
OCALYTHRON: Daughter of LOS and ENITHARMON, EMANATION of RINTRAH (Wrath).
OG and ANAK: Legendary heathen giants defeated in the conquest of the Promised Land. In B., OG and ANAK, OG and SIHON, or OG, ANAK, SIHON and SATAN are threat-figures opposing man’s self-fulfilment.
OLIVET: Mount of Olives, just outside Jerusalem, scene of Jesus’ agony in the Garden before the Crucifixion.
OLOLON: In M, the sixfold EMANATION of Milton; his three wives and three daughters; in Eden, a river region and its multitudes of dwellers; descended to earth, a virgin.
OOTHOON: A daughter of LOS and ENITHARMON; female desire for free love; heroine of VDA.
ORC: Lat. orcus, ‘hell’. The ‘Demon Red’; Rebellion; Revolution; Libido. He is the fallen, earthly form of the Zoa LUVAH (Passion), born to LOS (Prophecy). He is typically a babe or a pubescent flaming youth; he is fettered but ultimately frees himself. His two forms are fire or pillar of fire, and serpent.
PADDINGTON: A slum district of London, in B.’s time being redeveloped. PAHAD (PACHAD): A name of God, commonly translated ‘fear’ or ‘terror’. See SEVEN EYES OF GOD.
PALAMABRON: A son of LOS: the artist’s Pity. In the ‘Bard’s Song’ of M he represents Blake, the genuine artist, whose labours at the harrow make it possible for seeds to grow. His antagonist SATAN represents Blake’s patron William Hayley, the self-deluding bad artist whose proper labour is at the mills of logical reasoning, but who wishes to appropriate the harrow. See also RINTRAH; BROMION; THEOTORMON.
PAUL, ST: The Apostle to the Gentiles; preacher of Man’s union with Christ; founder of the Church Militant. See TWENTY-SEVEN CHURCHES.
PEACHEY: See ALBION, SONS OF.
PEOR: A mountain peak in MOAB. BETH-PEOR: a valley, burial place of Moses, just outside the Promised Land.
PHARAOH: Title of kings of Egypt.
PHARISEES: Legalistic Jewish sect, rejecters of Jesus.
PHILISTEA: Heathen nation hostile to Israel.
POLYPUS: General name for a variety of tentacled sea-creatures including the jellyfish, sea anemone and hydra; colonial organisms such as the Portuguese man-of-war, formed by budding; also a kind of tumour. In B., symbol of the meaninglessly breeding physical world, and human society within it.
PRIAM: King of Troy in the Iliad. In B., associated with war and paganism.
RAGAN: See ALBION, DAUGHTERS OF.
RAHAB: 1. Biblical harlot of Jericho who aided Israelite spies. 2. In Psalms and Isaiah, identified with Egypt and ‘the dragon’. In B., she becomes the Whore of Babylon, also called MYSTERY (Revelation 17), the seductive, cruel and corrupt Church opposed to true Christianity. She and TIRZAH are degenerate forms of VALA. Together they comprise the DAUGHTERS OF ALBION. Their triumph is the triumph of female will.
REPHAIM: Heb. ‘giants’ or ‘ghosts’. A general name applied to several pre-Israelite tribes. VALE OF REPHAIM: a valley near Jerusalem, supposed to harbour those ghosts. SEA OF REPHAIM: Blake’s invention.
REUBEN: See ISRAEL, SONS OF. Eldest son of Jacob–Israel, in B. commonly used to represent them all. Also represents the ‘average sensual man’.
RINTRAH: In the Argument to MHH, a vague figure of impending upheaval. Elsewhere specified as a son of LOS; the artist’s Wrath or Indignation; in the ‘Bard’s Song’ of M, an ally of PALAMABRON. See also BROMION; THEOTORMON.
ROCK OF AGES: Traditional epithet for God and, more popularly, Christ. In B. it is the place where Albion is left to sleep.
ROUSSEAU, JEAN JACQUES: 1712–78. French philosopher praised by B. in FR as a precursor of revolution, but elsewhere rejected for his deism and belief in the virtue of the Natural Man.
SABRINA: See ALBION, DAUGHTERS OF.
SALISBURY PLAIN: See DRUIDS.
SATAN: 1. The ‘God of this world’, worshipped in all forms of self-righteous morality.
2. A ‘state’ rather than a character: (a) the ‘limit of Opacity’ beyond which Man cannot fall, and live; (b) the selfhood in every man.
3. In ‘the Bard’s Song’ of M, Satan (Hayley) is the self-righteous and self-deluded artist, antagonist of PALAMABRON (Blake) the genuine artist. Both are sons of LOS.
4. A degenerate form of the Zoa URIZEN.
SCOFIELD: See ALBION, SONS OF.
SEVEN EYES OF GOD: A succession of guardian deities corresponding to periods of human history and religious development, each inadequate until the end. Their names and periods are as follows:
LUCIFER: Silver age: period of wars of Titans and Olympians, wars of Jotans on Odin in the Eddas.
MOLOCH: Bronze age: period of Druidism, human wars, human sacrifice.
ELOHIM: Iron Age: creation of Adam and Eve, and of the physical universe as we know it, from 4004 BC. Here begin the TWENTY-SEVEN CHURCHES.
SHADDAI: period of the nine patriarchs Adam to Lamech (Genesis 5) and their Churches.
PACHAD: period of the eleven patriarchs Noah to Terah (Genesis 11:10–26), and their Churches.
J
EHOVAH: period of the First Covenant: Abraham (end of Druidism and human sacrifice), Moses (the Ten Commandments and the Law), Solomon (consolidation of Kingdom; Judgement; Wisdom), and their Churches.
JESUS: period of Christianity: Paul, Constantine, Charlemaine, Luther, and their Churches.
SHADDAI: A name of God commonly translated ‘the Almighty’. See SEVEN EYES OF GOD.
SHADOW: 1. An individual’s suppressed vitality or desires.
2. The inferior and dim projection of any reality. For example, VALA (Nature) is a ‘shadow’ of JERUSALEM (Spirit).
SHADOWY FEMALE: An earth-figure, fallen form of VALA (Nature), born to ENITHARMON. Her rape by ORC (Revolution) precipitates war.
SHILOH: Biblical sanctuary-town, northern sister-city to JERUSALEM. In B.’s political allegory, the EMANATION of France.
SIHON: See OG.
SIMEON: See ISRAEL, SONS OF.
SINAI, MT: The mountain on which God gave Moses the Ten Commandments.
SLADE, SLAYD: See ALBION, SONS OF.
SOLOMON: King of Israel following David; consolidated rule, built the Temple, is supposed to have written Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs.
SOTHA: Soothe. A son of LOS and ENITHARMON associated with sexual fantasy or dream. Frustrated, he helps cause war; labouring, he helps create bodies. His EMANATION is Thiralatha or Diralada (Eur, SL).
SLAYD: See ALBION, SONS OF.
SPECTRE: The masculine principle which may divide from a being when his feminine portion (EMANATION) separates, to assume independent life. Usually ‘the reasoning power in man’, it is brutal, obsessive and selfish, and must be reintegrated.
SPECTRES OF THE DEAD: Unborn spirits in need of bodies, or mortals in need of the ‘body’ of Art, without which they die.
SONS OF ALBION: See ALBION, SONS OF.
STONEHENGE: See DRUIDS.
SURREY: County in south-east England; in B.’s time included LAMBETH, the district of London in which B. lived 1791–1800.
SUSSEX: County in south of England. B. lived near the seashore in the village of FELPHAM, 1800–1803.
SWEDENBORG, EMANUEL: 1688–1772. Swedish engineer-turned-mystic philosopher, founder of the New Church. B. embraced his visionary elements, attacked his pedantry and conventional morality.
TABERNACLE: A shrine. In Old Testament, the veiled shrine containing a Holy of Holies in which was the Ark of the Covenant, and the Presence of God, carried by the Israelites through the wilderness. May symbolize protection of a true ideal, or concealment of a false one. In sexual symbolism: the female body or genitals.
THAMES: Chief river of England, flowing through London.
THARMAS: The arms, Father Thames, doubting Thomas. ‘Parent Power’, Man’s sensation. In EDEN, he is that which enfolds and maintains Man’s coherence, hence a shepherd. He is also Man’s means of self-communication, hence the tongue. In the Fall, he becomes Chaos, the Flood, an incoherent and hence false tongue. His leading qualities throughout are simplicity, honesty, guilelessness. See FOUR ZOAS.
THEOTORMON: God-fear? In VDA, the too-meek lover, broken by jealousy and prudishness. Elsewhere, a son of LOS: the artist’s care or conscientiousness. A Hamlet-figure. See also RINTRAH; PALAMBRON; BROMION.
THOR: Norse thunder-god.
TIRZAH: Heb. ‘delight’. 1. One of Zelophehad’s five daughters who succeeded in becoming his heirs (the others were Milcah, Hoglah, Noah, Zillah); hence, ‘Female Will’. 2. Canaanite city on Mt EPHRAIM which became a secessionist northern capital, rival to JERUSALEM. In B., a beautiful and cruel virgin mother, or Mother Nature, who binds Man to a physical world. She and RAHAB are degenerate forms of VALA. Together they comprise all the DAUGHTERS OF ALBION.
TREE OF MYSTERY: A multiply-enrooting tree of obscure and esoteric knowledge, guarded by priests, which divides Man from God. It derives from the tree of forbidden knowledge in Genesis, the banyan, the deadly upas tree of Java described in Erasmus Darwin’s Loves of the Plants, and the Norse world ash, Yggdrasil, whose branches and roots extended through heaven, earth and underworld, and which was to be destroyed at the doom of the Gods. It is also the Cross of Christ.
TYBURN: Hill, near a brook, site of the London gallows.
TYRE: Prosperous Phoenician port city. See COVERING CHERUB.
TWELVE TRIBES OF ISRAEL: See ISRAEL, SONS OF.
TWENTY-SEVEN CHURCHES, or HEAVENS: Official Judeo-Christianity: an incrustation surrounding Man’s imagination in successive layers or folds (see MUNDANE SHELL) which to him seem like ‘heavens’. Each is a historic period.
DRUIDS 1–9
Adam-Lameth (from geneologies in Genesis 5). These are HERMAPHRODITIC, self-contradictory.
10–20
Noah-Terah (from Genesis 11:10–26). These are ‘Male within female’, patriarchal authority.
HEBREWS
21–3
Abraham – end of human sacrifice, beginning of chosen people. Moses – Exodus’ Ten Commandments of Moral Law.
Solomon – Temple; consolidation of Empire.
CHRISTIANS
24–7
Paul – Church Militant begins.
Constantine – Christianity becomes State religion.
Charlemaine – foundation of Holy Roman Empire.
Luther – Reformation.
All these are ‘female within male’, religion within war: increasing aggressiveness but also increasing worship of female (mariolatry leads to Natural Religion).
UDAN-ADAN: Lake of Formlessness or Indefiniteness in the Forest of Error (ENTUTHON BENYTHON).
ULRO: Ur + low. The world of pure materialism and delusion, the basest condition to which Man can sink. See GENERATION; BEULAH; EDEN.
URIZEN: Horizon; your reason. ‘Prince of Light’, Man’s intellect. In Eternity he is Faith and Certainty. In the Fall he is Doubt, Authoritarianism, Limitation, Abstraction. He is the supreme tyrant–god–priest–king–father figure. In political allegory, he is England, LUVAH is France. See FOUR ZOAS.
URTHONA: Earth owner. Man’s instinct, intuition, a cave-dwelling blacksmith in EDEN. Manifests primarily in the form of LOS. See FOUR ZOAS.
URTHONA, SHADOWY DAUGHTER OF: See SHADOWY FEMALE.
VALA: Vale, veil, Valhalla. EMANATION of LUVAH. In Eternity, he is Love, she is the Beloved. In the Fall she is the seductress Nature triumphant over spirit, cruel yet herself suffering, the femme fatale. Her degenerate forms include RAHAB, TIRZAH and the SHADOWY FEMALE. Her VEIL is ‘the film of matter which covers all reality’ (Damon, Dictionary), and is variously identified as the Veil of the Temple which separates Man from God; the Moral Law; the MUNDANE SHELL; the body itself; and the female hymen.
VERULAM: Ruined Roman town in southern England. The rationalist philosopher Francis Bacon was Baron Verulam. The town is in the province of Canterbury, and B. at times identifies the two.
VOLTAIRE: 1694–1778. French philosopher admired (in FR) by Blake for his attacks on hypocrisy and organized religion, but rejected for his deism.
ZEBULON: See ISRAEL, SONS OF.
ZOAS, FOUR: See FOUR ZOAS.
ZOA: A Greek plural, ‘living creatures’, used by B. as a singular.
ZION: Heb. ‘fortress’. The Temple hill in JERUSALEM, at times identified with the whole city.
Note to the Indexes
Manuscript deletions and emendations are reproduced in both indexes but ignored for purposes of alphabetization, except where they constitute a major part of the entry. Blake’s works are abbreviated throughout as follows:
SI
Songs of Innocence
SE
Songs of Experience
NPF
Notebook Poems and Fragments, c. 1789–93
NP
Notebook Poems, c. 1800–1806
NESV
Notebook Epigrams and Satiric Verses, c. 1808–12
MVE
Miscellaneous Verses and Epigrams
Index of Titles
A Cradle Song (NPF) 137
A Cradle Song (SI) 110
A Dream 115
A Little Boy Lost 130
A Little Girl Lost 131
A [Pitiable] Pitiful Case 616
A Poison Tree 129
A Pretty Epigram for [Those] the Entertainment of Those who [pay] have paid great sums in the Venetian & Flemish Oozc 620
A Song of Liberty 194
A War Song to Englishmen 60
Advice of the Popes who succeeded the Age of Rafael 632
Africa 237
Ah! Sun-Flower 126
All Religions are One 77
America 208
An Ancient Proverb 149
An Ancient Proverb [extended version] 159
An answer to the parson 155
An Epitaph 619
An Imitation of Spen[s]er 35
Another (Epitaph: Here lies John Trot) 619
Another (Epitaph: I was buried) 619
Asia 239
Auguries of Innocence 506
[Blakes apology for his Catalogue] 627
Blind-man’s Buff 37
Christian Forbearance 138
Cromek Speaks 622
Cromeks Opinions put into Rhyme 622
[The] Earths Answer (NPF) 142
Earth’s Answer (SE) 118
English Encouragement of Art 622
Eternity 153
Europe 225
Fair Elenor 24
Florentine Ingratitude 615
For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise 861
From Cratetos 628
Gwin, King of Norway 32
Holy Thursday (NPF) 155
Holy Thursday (SE) 119
Holy Thursday (SI) 111
[How to Know Love from Deceit] 148
Imitation of Pope: A Compliment to the Ladies 618
In a mirtle shade 142
Infant Joy 115
Infant Sorrow (NPF) 139
Infant Sorrow (SE) 129
The Complete Poems Page 90