From: blake-d-request@albion.com Sent: Monday, January 06, 1997 5:06 PM To: blake-d@albion.com Subject: blake-d Digest V1996 #143 ------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 143 Today's Topics: Theology vs. psychology Re: Interesting parallels psychology vs "psychology" Re: psychology vs "psychology" Introductory Message psychology vs "psychology" Re: psychology vs "psychology" Re: Introductory Message Ooooooohhh Re: psychology vs "psychology" Re: psychology vs "psychology" Re: psychology vs "psychology" -Reply Re: psychology vs "psychology" -Reply Re: psychology vs "psychology" punctuation (was psychology) Re: punctuation (was psychology) searching ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 15:31:16 -0500 From: TomD3456@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Theology vs. psychology Message-Id: <961215153115_403353353@emout10.mail.aol.com> Gloudina's last posting set me to thinking (ouch!) about a question I asked some time ago ("Is the struggle between Jerusalem and Vala something that women find in themselves?"). I'm afraid it may have been an offensive question -- and, worse than that, stupid -- , in that I asked it of women rather than of all of us. My apologies for that. But the origin of my stupidity interests me. I was asking from a rather blurry notion of Blake's characters as "inner people," and an assumption that their stories could be related to human psychology. Gloudina's post suggested that my question contained a fundamental error, and I think I'm beginning to see it. Gloudina wrote "Surely what we have here is theological thinking... To read FZ and J on any other level than the metaphysical, is to misread it." When I read this, I realized that I didn't understand the difference between a theological (or "metaphysical") reading of Blake and a psychological one. I had assumed, almost without thinking, that Blake's characters, and Jungian archetypes, were alike representations of "human energies." And that seemed "theological" enough to me. (Ezra Pound, after all, described the pagan gods as representations of human energies -- and Blake, of course, says "All deities reside in the Human Breast.") But now I think I was wandering lost among Generalities and had not sufficiently inquired into the distinctions between theology, mythology, and (archetypal) psychology, distinctions which sometimes seem explicitly blurred in Jung (or maybe just in my blurry memory of Jung). (Ralph Dumain's comments in recent posts, and Gloudina's comments, are making me re-think my understanding of and evaluation of Jung, and of this blurring.) One fundamental distinction between theology and psychology may be that psychology has to do with what Blake would call the "vegetable" world, theology with the eternal one. Psychology is concerned with the "vegetated" personality, the level on which the sexes are different because they are bound to differently gendered bodies. On this level, it may well be true that men's and women's psychologies are as different as their bodies -- each sex may have different characteristic inner figures and stories, different relations to mothers, fathers, etc., as Jung suggests. And that has its own importance, and is worth writing about. But that's not necessarily what Blake was writing about. I would guess that Blake was describing more universal aspects of our modes of experience, the "eternal lineaments" rather than the vegetated ones -- the sense in which men's and women's spirits are as _alike_ as their bodies. This would be the theological (or metaphysical) level. So perhaps the difference between "theological" and "psychological" writing has to do with the degree of universality of their terms, or the level of vision on which the author has taken his stand. Theology has to do with three- and four-fold vision; psychology with one- and two-fold. (In terms of the Enneagram system, psychology has to do with fixations, theology with Essence.) And then, trying to interpret a theological writer on a psychological level would distort and trivialize his meaning. Does this make any sense? --Tom Devine ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 14:49:35 -0800 From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Interesting parallels Message-Id: <199612152249.OAA10832@dfw-ix9.ix.netcom.com> Dear Tom, Thanks pointing out for some interesting connections re: Blake and Some (the most striking to me was the one between the Blakean "Four-fold Man" and the Luvahn East, Urthonan North, Urizenic South, and Tharmasian West of Albion, and the Dagara belief in the four living parts of the circle). I had just been reading a little in Frye and Archetypal criticism and was reminded that the circle of life (in the regenerative and the figurative sense) is one of the common themes of myth (or more precisely, one of the commonly-traced themes within myth and myth-like genres) . There is, of course, a huge debate about whether these proliferating Ur-texts or Ur-images were created independently or disseminated throughout the world. I wrote some of the entries to a new encyclopedia of feminist theory which has just appeared in print (Garland) and had to research the issue as it relates to themes used in the fairy-tale. Just to play devil's advocate, I wonder how much the Jesuit contact with the tribe, and of course, the formal learning you describe (Sorbonne, Brandeis) has influence backward and forward; that is to say, I wonder how much Western influence creeps into the Dagaran belief system and, conversely, how much of African myth gets reinterpreted in the light of Blake and other Western influences (but this is always the double-bind you get into in such discussions...). Nevertheless, it is a fascinating coincidence, and one I am glad you brought to our attention. Regards to all, with best wishes for the holiday season. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 16:17:17 -0500 (EST) From: bouwer To: blake@albion.com Subject: psychology vs "psychology" Message-Id: <199612162117.QAA22424@host.ott.igs.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Tom Devine, before I say anything, I want to thank you for your bright presence on this list. You often give credit where credit is not always due. Your honest and perceptive thinking is often more insight- ful than the sometimes confused posts that you are trying to digest. That said, I think I would prefer that you do not equate psychology with one- and two-fold vision, theology with three- and four-fold vision. (My intuition tells me that,on some level, I may want to talk of all four visions as being the stuff that "psychology" is made of. But then a special kind of psychology. See below, the quotes I give from Ouspen- sky.) But before I leave the subject: I realised something about two-fold vision, which may be totally old hat to most people, but I had somehow missed it. And that is: as soon as the Incarnation takes place, as soon as Spirit is born into Ulro, the harrowing of hell begins. I do not know why this seems so important to me. But it fills me with awe. My husband helped me to gain this insight. Now when I tried out the following "theory" on him, he balked. That is: that single vision contains no contraries, of course; that double vision equates with thesis/ antithesis, triple vision with thesis/antithesis/synthesis (that danger zone that Blake is trying to tell us over and over again not to fall asleep in,) but to pass beyond it to fourfold vision. To return to the concept of "psychology." Ouspensky says: "To begin with I must say that practically never in history has psychology stood at so low a level as at the present time. It has lost all touch with its origin and its meaning... Psychology is called a new science. This is quite wrong. Psychology is, perhaps the oldest science...a forgotten science... had to use different disguises..psychology was regarded as inferior to philosophy... in the ancient times... it existed in the form of Mysteries... systems which study man not from the point of view of what he is, or what he seems to be, but from the point of view of what he may become; that is, from the point of view of his possible evolution..." (The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution - P.D. Ouspensky (1950.) Somehow, I feel that it is only when we start studying Blakean psychology in the 21st century, that we will gain a true insight into the full greatness of the man and will begin to understand what he is trying to do to us. Finally, Tom, could you explain about "the Enneagram system." One has met the term in Gurdjieff, but I suspect that you are referring to something much more immediate. Gloudina Bouwer ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Dec 1996 01:41:32 -0500 From: TomD3456@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: psychology vs "psychology" Message-Id: <961217014130_1254931033@emout13.mail.aol.com> Gloudina- The Enneagram system I was referring to developed out of the Gurdjieff work, via Oscar Ichazo's Arica Institute, Claudio Naranjo, Helen Palmer, and others. There are various contentious schools now, all alike in that they apply the Enneagram to psychology and deny each others' validity. A friend of mine who was studying with a Sufi teacher in New York told me that they all had it wrong -- it's not a psychological system at all. Oh well... Anyhow, the most popular version out here in California is Helen Palmer's. The main idea is that each of us falls into one of nine personality types, each of which represents a "fixation" on a particular strategy of self-preservation. This fixation usually develops out of childhood experiences, but then outlives the situations it was needed for and becomes a barrier to experiencing the fullness of life. The fixation, essentially a set of "habits of attention," is what we often refer to as one's "personality," but it is a fallen personality. Progress toward freeing oneself from the fixation leads toward experiencing "Essence," which is something like Blake's Eternity or fourfold vision or, one might say, the True Self. In that sense, though I was using the term "theology" for descriptions of the True Self, it might be what Ouspensky and you were calling "true psychology." But then -- please, will you define Theology or Metaphysics? I mean, if God is the Human Imagination, how different can Theology be from Psychology? -Tom Devine ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Dec 1996 13:04:01 +0000 From: timli@controls.eurotherm.co.uk (Tim Linnell) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Introductory Message Message-Id: <28713.199612171303@merlot.controls.eurotherm.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Having been on the list briefly some time ago (I unsubscribed due to pressure of work), I've now had my interest in Blake fired up again by the marvellous Ackroyd biography and the recent biography of John Linnell. Linnell was in fact my great great great grandfather, and I have a particular interest in his relations with Blake. Tim ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Dec 1996 09:46:27 -0500 (EST) From: bouwer To: blake@albion.com Subject: psychology vs "psychology" Message-Id: <199612171446.JAA26975@host.ott.igs.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Tom, you ask me to define "theology" and "metaphysics" in relation to Blake's thinking. I should, of course, not have used those labels for Blake's thinking in the first place. I am sorry about that. I was trying to ex- plain that when I read FZ and J, I must not identify with Vala and Jerusalem, but try and figure out what the relationship is between the fallen earth and the future earth restored to innocence. To have used terms like "theology" and "metaphysics" was to demean and obscure Blake's thinking, and I again apologise for that. I will avoid such labels in future. I do, however, like and advocate searching for the Zoas and their emanations in the microcosm of one's day by day existence. My husband and I seem to be particularly fasci- nated by Ahania. Whenever he does his favourite crossword puzzle and he calls in my help, and we figure out a parti- cularly ingenious clue, and delight in the thinking of the person who put the crossword puzzle together, then we say: "Ah, that is Ahania." With Luvah and Vala I have a problem. It is easy enough to "think" about Luvah, harder to feel him. And is there an unfallen state of Vala, or is that Jerusalem? And do they, or should they, be facets of my day to day existence? Gloudina Bouwer ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Dec 1996 21:34:00 -0600 From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: psychology vs "psychology" Message-Id: <96121721340094@wc.stephens.edu> So this list really has declined into vaporings about pop spirituality and pop psychobabble, abandoning Blake with entire predictability. Why not just re-name it vschap-l and be done with it. Time for a quite winter's nap while the Californians figure out their enneagrams. Oooooohhhh, the humanity! Tom Dillingham ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 02:45:21 -0500 From: TomD3456@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Introductory Message Message-Id: <961218024517_1087320554@emout20.mail.aol.com> Welcome back, Tim-- It's particularly exciting (for me, at least) to have a descendent of Blake's great friend on the list. It's something I could not have imagined when I became interested in Blake and his circle some twenty five years ago, and somehow it makes it all more real and down-to-earth. Thanks for reintroducing yourself. I'll look forward to your comments and to any information you may have to share. --Tom Devine ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 08:42:15 -0500 (EST) From: bouwer To: blake@albion.com Subject: Ooooooohhh Message-Id: <199612181342.IAA28354@host.ott.igs.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Tom Dillingham, you are still around! I see you are a man now, not a mouse. Gloudina ( from the backwoods of eastern Ontario, Canada) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 08:48:16 -0500 (EST) From: Scott A Leonard To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: psychology vs "psychology" Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Now, now Tom. Let's not be so hasty to conflate the vaporous with the vapid. Perhaps your temporarily spent after a grueling term? "Rest before labor" my brother. And leave my native state the hell alone. Merry Commercial Vortex everyone. Scott A. Leonard On Tue, 17 Dec 1996, TOM DILLINGHAM wrote: > So this list really has declined into vaporings about pop spirituality > and pop psychobabble, abandoning Blake with entire predictability. > Why not just re-name it vschap-l and be done with it. Time for > a quite winter's nap while the Californians figure out their > enneagrams. Oooooohhhh, the humanity! > Tom Dillingham > ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 11:22:07 -0800 From: tesserae To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: psychology vs "psychology" Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 9:34 PM -0600 12/17/96, TOM DILLINGHAM wrote: >So this list really has declined into vaporings about pop spirituality >and pop psychobabble, abandoning Blake with entire predictability. Actually, I was kind of enjoying the variety of conversations. It would seem to me that even Blake himself would want (demand ?) his work to inspire outside thought. In my experience, keeping a tone of "can _only_ talk about so-and-so" drives a list to a stale place of no growth. I'm enjoying all I've read on this list, so far. (not just the alleged "pop" topics) Have a lovely winter's nap. tesserae =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= when i need to wipe my face / i use the back of my hand and i like to take up space / just because i can and i use my dress / to wipe up my drink i care less and less / what people think (ani) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= http://users.deltanet.com/~tess * tesserae@asarian.org ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 16:21:14 -0600 From: David Medearis To: blake@albion.com, tess@deltanet.com Subject: Re: psychology vs "psychology" -Reply Message-Id: Hi everyone. My name is David Medearis. I am a post-bac student at the University of Houston. My B.S. is in psychology, and I am currently taking pre-med courses while working at a psychiatric hospital in the Texas Medical Center. I just subscribed to this group the other day, but I have been a big fan of Blake for about the past three years or so. I have never participated in one of these things before so I am not sure what to say. Do you guys pick particular poems to discuss or what? This may seem. like a Stupid question but I. was wondering what you guys think about Blake's idiosyncratic punctuation & use of Caps in his Personal letters. Is there some reason he was doing that? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 16:42:27 -0800 From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: psychology vs "psychology" -Reply Message-Id: <199612190042.QAA11084@dfw-ix6.ix.netcom.com> Hi, David. Welcome to the Blake list. >From what I can glean from my sources about Blake's idiosynchratic punctuation, (which still continues to be the subject of debate) there are several explanations afloat. Working strictly from recall (and this is open to discussion, which I hope will be generated) it seems to me that some editior-critics of Blake put his desultory spellings &c down to a lack of formal education; some attribute them to typographical error. There has probably been an argument that Blake in some cases was deliberately ambiguous with his punctuation (I tend to think this is sometimes the case) though I don't know of any off-hand (I'll do a little looking around on this ). It is difficult not to suspect that the ambient meanings of May/may etc. lend themselves in some of the poems to such delicious ambiguities that Blake intentionally played with the nuances of spelling/punctuation/capitalization in some of his work. But beware--many editions of the text of Blake are mediated through modernization or other editorial fidgeting, so check out different editions. There have been several methods of dealing with this problem in editions of Blake's works. Johnson & Grant, in their edition of the selected works (*Blake's Poetry and Designs*) argue in their Note on the Texts that a stablized version of Blake is difficult to establish because Blake was his own printer and editor, and each copy of a given work he made differs from the others. As J&G have noted, the 2 standard editions of Blake use one of 2 principles: selecting a single copytext of each work and then noting the variants and modernizing the punctuation (Keynes does this); or, collating several copies of each work following what is judged to be Blake's last or preferred text, and suppling deleted passages in brackets along with other editorial apparatus/information (Erdman). One of the reasons Erdman elected to do this is that he was able, as Keynes was not, to work with improved printings (all this is in J&G notes). Others, like Michael Mason, just go ahead and modernize after G.E. Bentley Jr's transcriptions, *William Blake's Writings.* A new wrinkle in the punctuation debate was recently the subject of discussion on the list. Joseph Viscomi's Blake Archive has provided such clear reproductions of text and graphic (you must see them if you haven't--they have a translucent and luminous quality when seen on the monitor that is almost like stained-glass) that it is now possible, as one subscriber pointed out, to detect and discern a comma with an acid-shortened tail, previousy thought to be(and printed as ) a period. I hope this is not too simplistic. Susan Reilly You wrote: > >Hi everyone. My name is David Medearis. I am a post-bac student at the >University of Houston. My B.S. is in psychology, and I am currently >taking pre-med courses while working at a psychiatric hospital in the >Texas Medical Center. I just subscribed to this group the other day, but I >have been a big fan of Blake for about the past three years or so. > >I have never participated in one of these things before so I am not sure >what to say. Do you guys pick particular poems to discuss or what? > >This may seem. like a Stupid question but I. was wondering what you >guys think about Blake's idiosyncratic punctuation & use of Caps in his >Personal letters. >Is there some reason he was doing that? > > ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 17:44:01 -0800 From: mthorn@ix.netcom.com (MT) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: psychology vs "psychology" Message-Id: <199612190144.RAA04192@dfw-ix10.ix.netcom.com> Scandalous cur, most foul! Time: They remember it not. Gnat-like, extinguished in a flash, Imagining the life Eternal, Complete. Never knowing the Wick It has been re-lit. Cease! Submit! Nay... Come no further; I warn you! Too late... One Mangy Emanation from Urizen's lesser offspring doth pen, Troll-like: So this list really has declined into vaporings about pop spirituality and pop psychobabble, abandoning Blake with entire predictability. Why not just re-name it vschap-l and be done with it. Time for a quite winter's nap while the Californians figure out their enneagrams. Oooooohhhh, the humanity! Heaping insult upon injury, the Troll even evokes the gratuitous Slave-Name of the quadrant's Sunshine Conquest, rousing the desolate heart of one final holdout, to wit: Bro, that's: "The Horror. The Horror." Like, Get it right Next Time, we've moved on from The Hindenburg. The "Cinema" now Warps the Paradigm, Don'tcha know? Anyhow, like Awesome Troll! Bitchin'. First Rate. Dude, Ya know what I'm sayin'? It's like dis, man: 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. See it man? I blame Bill. Like how many heads dropped a tab on the beach and had this little ditty flash into their exploding brains. Next thing you know they're on the phones talkin' about all the sun and land and openess n' shit... And then how 'bout where the dude's rap'n to his homie: A frowning Thistle implores my stay. What to others a trifle appears. Fills me full of smiles or tears; For double the vision my Eyes do see, And a double vision is always with me. With my inward Eye 'tis an old Man grey; With my outward a Thistle across my way. If I might interject. The western conquest doesn't even remember the names of the original tribes, no less that there even were any indigenous human beings. The Natives are in retreat or body-snatched by psychotic easterners fleeing their own fouled nest only to carry an embedded, unconscious program to remake it where they land. And the mid-westerners; body-armored, conservative business majors with Building Plans and Demographics, Eyed an Opportunity. The body snatchers prevailed. Larval, insatiable appetites consume the egg in a constant push outward toward the final techno-encrustation of the sweetest and Rarest of Jewels. A vigorous Blake would have recognized the soured Jerusalem Experiment, with its inexorable juggernaut of malignant growth, and been Shamed with Awe. A tired Blake would only weep at Albion's blighted future. The Last Hold-Out remains in hiding, remembering, though: Let the nice Psychobabbler finish his thought; that's a good lad: .. Now I a fourfold vision see, And a fourfold vision is given to me; 'Tis fourfold in my supreme delight And threefold in soft Beulah's night And twofold Always. May God us keep From Single vision & Newton's sleep. Later, troll dude. Gotta go polish my crack pipe. Don't be dis'n no Hoods now, lest the snatchers get you too, bro. The preceeding List Degrading Babble was brought to you by MT Rorschach (Security! Would you please show this... disorderly 'roustabout' to the nearest List Exit?! PRONTO!) Like, It's been real... ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Dec 96 22:50:57 CST From: Lance Massey To: blake@albion.com Subject: punctuation (was psychology) Message-Id: <9612190459.AA23226@uu6.psi.com> Although I hav e suggested before that Blake's irregular (even by his time's standards) punctu ation may have been a point of "resistance" to immediate intelligibility, I thi nk now that it may have more to do with the case against Locke/Newton. Languag e theory as it was influenced by science and Lockean notions of signification h olds language to be simply transparent--it's sole purpose is to record and rela y objective information about the world. Blake appears at times to call attent ion to the medium of language itself with his oddly-placed or omitted punctuati on. Perhaps he wanted to foreground language's opacity, its creative, substant ial properties; which he appears to have believed language possesses. --Lance ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 08:17:52 +0000 From: timli@controls.eurotherm.co.uk (Tim Linnell) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: punctuation (was psychology) Message-Id: <2786.199612190817@merlot.controls.eurotherm.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > Although I hav >e suggested before that Blake's irregular (even by his time's standards) punctu >ation may have been a point of "resistance" to immediate intelligibility, I thi >nk now that it may have more to do with the case against Locke/Newton. Languag >e theory as it was influenced by science and Lockean notions of signification h >olds language to be simply transparent--it's sole purpose is to record and rela >y objective information about the world. Blake appears at times to call attent >ion to the medium of language itself with his oddly-placed or omitted punctuati >on. Perhaps he wanted to foreground language's opacity, its creative, substant >ial properties; which he appears to have believed language possesses. Sorry to wreck a good theory, but this style of writing was actually quite a common practice in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, particularly amongst the self educated: I've seen letters from John Linnell's father (a tradesman, like Blake, and relatively uneducated) which are very similar in style, and he certainly had no axe to grind against Locke, Newton, or the role of language in recording objective information etc. The capitalisation is Purely for Emphasis. I suppose that more than anything, this illustrates that Blake was an outsider in the artistic establishment: most of what you read and perceive to be 'his time's standards' is in fact sourced from an essentially middle class and educated art elite. All the best Tim Linnell ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 10:54:35 -0500 From: "D. Baerwald" To: BLAKE@albion.com Subject: searching Message-Id: <97Jan2.105843est.26544@annap2.jsc.mil> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit If you are the Bill Blake that lived in Cedar Falls Iowa and went to HS there in the 50's, give me a shout, please! Dean Baerwald E-Mail soter@erols.com -------------------------------- End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #143 **************************************