Blake List — Volume 1997 : Issue 56

Today's Topics:
	 Re: Elohim and Other Matters
	 query...
	 Re: Elohim and Other Matters
	 Urizen on Frontispiece...
	 Query for Blake group
	 RE: Urizen W/Compass
	 Re: Introduction
	 Re: Orc, life & times-Reply Pam
	 Re: Introduction
	 signing on
	 Introduction
	 Re: signing on
	 Re: Orc, life & times-Reply Pam -Reply
	 Urizen, Snake, Preludium...
	 RE: Watt's View
	 Re: Urizen on Frontispiece...
	 Orc in  Africa
	 Re: Elohim
	 Re: Elohim
	 Looking for a "way in" to Blake
	 Blake's work somewhere online ?

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 11:57:57 -0500
From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Elohim and Other Matters
Message-Id: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Darlene Sybert wrote, hypothesizing about the Elohim painting:

>>Blake is emphasizing God's power, might, and holiness as opposed to
>>concern for or closeness to the man he is creating.

and Randall Albright replied:
>But it isn't a power and might like you would see in the Frontispiece to
>"Europe"! Elohim looks baffled, full of pain... an older version of the
>victim he is making? And as far as "holy", is THAT what bringing this poor
>creature to life is called? Adam is pre-snaked entwined, prostrate on his
>back, powerless to his creator's will. Is that a *concern* for Adam? Or
>just a knowing sadness of what lies in store? The picture is heavily
>sarcastic, notes Martin Butlin (see, folks, sometimes I actually read the
>"official commentaries!), a long way from God Creating Adam in The Sistine
>Chapel by Michelangelo! But maybe since man created God in his own image,
>men wrote the Bible, and... other things... this is a good commentary on it
>all. Other views?

I think you're both right, in a way.  The division between the human and
the divine, the creator and the creature (which itself constitutes the
Fall), is what creates "power, might, and holiness" as God claims those for
himself.  The more God is defined by his power, might, and holiness as
opposed to his creatures' weakness and humilty and unworthiness, the less
"closeness and concern" he has for his creatures.  The duality of "The
Lamb" and "The Tyger" turns in part on this theme:  the power of the Lamb
paradoxically rests in his lack of power, his fragility that identifies God
with the child and the sacrificial animal.  In "The Tyger," both God and
beast are distant from man and therefore "fearful."

I've always been struck, too, by the similar faces of "Elohim" and Adam in
that painting.  It reminds me of what happens to Los during his binding of
Urizen:  "He became what he beheld."  And incidentally, the power and might
of the frontispiece to Europe seems pretty distant and terrifying to me, as
beautiful as it is: the "creation" consists merely of setting boundaries,
but there's no glimpse of what's being created or measured.  That, too, is
a long way from Michelangelo, and I think that's part of Blake's point,
especially as he seems to draw on Michelangelo's depictions of human form.

Jennifer Michael

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 23:54:31 +0800
From: lim lee ching 
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: query...
Message-Id: <33773D37.37ED@pacific.net.sg>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
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hello everybody. having hidden in the shadows for a long time, i'm
finally "de-lurking" to post a query: is anyone familiar with the irish
writer john moriarty and his work and is willing to share? someone told
me about his similarities with blake, but seeing as i've not had the
opportunity to read moriarty's works, and they don't seem to be in wide
circulation--"dreamtime" and "the turtle was gone a long time ago", i'd
really appreciate it if some one could enlighten me a little because
there is a high possibility that i'd be able to meet moriarty in ireland
in august. also, this suggested relatedness with blake has spurred my
interests. anybody?

ching

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 19:38:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: TomD3456@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Elohim and Other Matters
Message-Id: <970512193611_-930110747@emout08.mail.aol.com>

Thanks to all of you for this discussion, which I have found illuminating,
particularly in Jennifer's splendid last post about the Tyger and the Lamb.
--Tom Devine

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 21:15:22 -0400
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Urizen on Frontispiece...
Message-Id: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Jennifer Michael wrote:

>...the power and might
>of the frontispiece to Europe seems pretty distant and terrifying to me, as
>beautiful as it is: the "creation" consists merely of setting boundaries,
>but there's no glimpse of what's being created or measured.  That, too, is
>a long way from Michelangelo, and I think that's part of Blake's point,
>especially as he seems to draw on Michelangelo's depictions of human form.

Interesting. To me, this is quite a calming picture, the clouds opening up,
the wind blowing... and then Urizen with his compass measuring...
something... out from above. I assume I'm within his realm.............

Is it distant and terrifying to other Blake On-Line members?

How much of that is based on what you know about Urizen, and not the
picture as a standalone piece?

Or is it an epiphany-- like any other explanation of the unknowable? Isn't
it cozy to be in the realm of that compass? I have a feeling that the
British Museum felt the need to explain with a little inscription on the
back of its cards that this is _not_ God, but the imperfect God of Reason,
because many would simply accept this depiction as a kind of Genesis
imagery, and find it... interesting!

Now the TITLE page of "Europe": I find that definitely scary.

-Randall Albright

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 13:22:51 -0400 (EDT)
From: Patricia Neill 
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Query for Blake group
Message-Id: <01IITMAU8TO29D4Q75@DBV>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
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Morris Eaves asked me to send this along to the Blake list:


From:	IN%"Morris.Eaves@btinternet.COM"  "Morris Eaves" 11-MAY-1997 12:57:00.71
To:	IN%"pnpj@db1.cc.rochester.edu"  "Patricia Neill"
CC:	IN%"finneran@utk.EDU"  "Richard J. Finneran"
Subj:	Query for Blake group


> Believe it or not, I have another Blake query for _The Yeats Reader_
which
> I previously overlooked. In _The Words upon the Window-pane_ (1934), a
> character says:
> 
> The poet Blake said that he never knew a bad man that had not something
> very good about him.
> 

Can anyone identify the Blakean source here for Richard Finneran?

Thanks--Morris Eaves

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 13:48:53 -0500 (EST)
From: WATT 
To: Blake@albion.com
Subject: RE: Urizen W/Compass
Message-Id: <8753481313051997/A26904/RUTH/11B56B703100*@MHS>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
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I think Both Jennifer and Randall have to be "right"; whatever in the world 
that can mean.  Remember, W.B.'s entire ouvre is consistent in one thing: 
the subversion of every claimant to authority, on the grounds that such 
claims constitute the (terrible) sin against the Holy Spirit, or, what Blake 
calls Imagination, The Poetic Genius, and the Human Form Divine.  Thus 
when Jennifer (or the British Museum, for that matter) reports that a design 
fills her with terror, what matters is that the feeling is both generated AND 
SHARED.  God Bless, in a word, all of you who let the designs penetrate 
your "armour" so that the arrows of your intellect may be fired.  What's 
exciting is the launching of them, not the question of whether they land 
inside or outside Urizen's great compass.  Jim Watt, Indiana  

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 14:17:12 +0000
From: bagamery@bellatlantic.net
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Introduction
Message-Id: <337877A7.1800@bellatlantic.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
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Hello.  I have been reading the Blake list postings for a few weeks now,
and I want to introduce myself formally before contributing anything
more argumentative.
	I am a part-time English "lecturer" at Robert Morris College and at the
Community College of Beaver County, both of which are in western
Pennsylvania, as you may know.  Back in 1993, I did my thesis on Blake
and D.H. Lawrence.  I am largely unfamiliar of Blake's later works, but
I am especially fond of and adept with the _Marriage_, so if any
discussion of MHH springs up, I will be contributing.

	A couple of more relevant points/questions follow:
(1) I am enjoying the Elohim postings.  Am I mistaken, or are modern
names ending in "el"--e.g., Daniel, Michael--references to Elohim? 
[This just suddenly occurred to me.]

(2) Does anyone know exactly how many people subscribe to this list?  I
note that five or six contributors appear most frequently, but certainly
there are many silent readers, yes?

Jonathan Bagamery

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 16:37:41 -0500 (EST)
From: WATT 
To: Blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Orc, life & times-Reply Pam
Message-Id: <0041371613051997/A29774/RUTH/11B56C252200*@MHS>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
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This is one for the synchronicity folk.  When I was reading Pam's reply to 
Gloudina, re: the integrity of the Zoas and the positive energies of Orc & 
Los, I was also listening to my desk top CD player.  When I came to 
Pam's description of the tragic state of things in South Africa, I was 
conscious of that peculiar mixture of joy and sadness which cannot be 
explained by logic, but which is, nonetheless, so familar and precious to 
me.  At the same time, I was aware of the music I was hearing, music I 
have loved from the first time I heard it, but which I had never troubled to 
really investigate.  What was playing was the Chronos Quartet's 
CD,"Pieces of Africa" (Electra Nonesuch 9 79275-2).  The specific track 
which was meeting and melding with Gloudina and Pam and my own 
Tharmas, Luvah, Urthona & Urizen constellation was written by Dumisani 
Maraire (b. 1943, Chakohwa, Manyika Province, Zimbabwe) called 
"Kutambarara" (Shona: "Spreading") written in 1990.  Here is part of the 
composer's commentary on thepiece: "What is spreading is African 
concepts, perspectives, philosophies, traditions and cultures through 
African music.  This is now being done by Africans themselves. ... Africa and 
Africans have been suppressed for a long time.  It was only around the 
1950s that Africans resisted and fought for their rights in their own land.  ... 
The other message of the song is that not all non-Africans oppressed 
Africans.  Actually there were and still are non-Africans who fought to free 
Africa from oppression financially, educationally and politically.  Music 
can dismantle cultural, political and racial barriers."

Music surely can so dismantle barriers and speak directly to us.  It is no 
mistake that W.B. sang all his life and went out singing, though the scholars 
often forget this.  Nor is it a mistake that, when I read Maraire's words, I 
understand that he is speaking to me --and has been speaking to me 
everytime I listened to his lovely music.  Furthermore, he spoke directly to 
Urthona and Luvah and Tharmas in me; Urizen was (as is so often the 
case!), out to lunch.  Still, it is Urizen who reminds me, while I type this, that 
Pam is one of the Africans Maraire is talking about.  Like me, like Maraire, 
like you --wherever you are-- she is laboring publically to build Jerusalem.  
And (really) nothing else matters.  Thank you, Pam & Gloudina & Maraire 
& the Chronos Quartet & William Blake & everyone else who tears down 
the barriers and builds harmony in their place.  Here's to the mingling of 
the Zoas forever!  Jim Watt, Indiana, jerUSAlem.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 13 May 97 15:22:27 -0700
From: Seth T. Ross 
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Introduction
Message-Id: <9705132222.AA02334@albion.com>
Content-Type: text/plain

> Does anyone know exactly how many people subscribe to this
> list?

233.

--Seth

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 20:00:12 -0500
From: "Jennifer G. Jesse" 
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: signing on
Message-Id: <1.5.4.32.19970514010012.00664e84@acs-popmail.uchicago.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Just a brief note to introduce myself to the subscribers.  I am a Ph.D.
candidate in Religion and Literature at the Divinity School of the
University of Chicago.  I have just finished my dissertation on Blake, a
project designed to rehabilitate what I take to be our somewhat jaundiced
interpretive view of Urizen.  The dissertation is entitled "The Binding of
Urizen: The Role of Reason in Blake's Religious Thought."  I have been in
love with Blake since 1978 and find that my obsession only deepens as the
years go by.

I am leaving Thursday for a two-day visit to see the exhibit currently on
display at the Yale Center for British Art.  If I am not transported from
there directly to heaven, I will check in again when I return....

Jennifer Jesse

p.s.  Greetings to my old friend, Jim Watt.  Such a pleasure to read your
messages.  How is Mr. Milton?
Jennifer G. Jesse
John Dungan
12207 S. Maple
Blue Island, IL 60406

Phone: 708-489-0931
Email: jgj1@midway.uchicago.edu

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 15:08:24 +0000
From: dgr@gwsc.vic.edu.au (Davydd Griffiths)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Introduction
Message-Id: <19970514050651000.AAA64@pentium.gwsc.vic.edu.au>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT

Just a quick note to say Hello.
I'm an English teacher at Glen Waverley Secondary College in 
Melbourne Australia.
Blake has been an interest in my life for many years and now I've 
been lucky enough to get the opportunity to teach it to a whole new 
generation!
I'm hoping that people might be able to suggest both electronic and 
old-fashioned materials that will engage young minds. 
Good to meet you all,

Davydd Griffiths
dgr@gwsc.vic.edu.au

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 01:19:51 -0400 (EDT)
From: WOLFMANDR@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: signing on
Message-Id: <970514011949_-1231342964@emout01.mail.aol.com>

welcome jennifer....

 Truly,
        Brian

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 11:43:02 +0200
From: P Van Schaik 
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Orc, life & times-Reply Pam -Reply
Message-Id: 

Dear Jim, 
I'm about to go off to Durban to lecture and your lovely compliment will
ring in my ears as I go.  The saddest thing is that when one listens to the
unique music of this part of the world, one is attuned to those from
whose culture all this sprang, but then one has to live in fear of those
abusing the newly -won freedoms for their own purposes.  All the same,
I find the most generous smiles coming my way from black Africans
tending booms at parking lots of shopping malls.  They always make my
day, though my nights are ruined a bit by having to wear a rapid
response alarm around  my neck in the house.
And here's another synchronism, an artist friend of mine left for New
York and I opened Blake, the way I do the I CHing, to find a good
message for him on his trip. It turned out to be related to what you say
Jim...  it was the passage asking what those golden builders are doing,
which goes on to describe the building of Golgonooza in the image of
ruined Jerusalem.  So,  I read it to him and then explained that it related to
his own work - as a mystical artist, deeply steeped in the kabbalah  - that
he , like others labouring for love, peace, inner harmony are all engaged
in the building. He has painted Mandela's portrait too and is now  going to
show his drawings for an Adamastor theme (relating mythologically to
the presiding spirit of Africa at the Cape) in Toronto in Canada.  The Wits
University Library in Johannesburg has comissioned him to do an
Adamsastor theme for its library.  In case any of you are likely to be in
Canada, and may know of some demonstration of his work,  his name is
Cyril Coetzee.   Many thanks for the loving interchange, Pam

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 09:19:22 -0400
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Urizen, Snake, Preludium...
Message-Id: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

It is rather a paradox, isn't it? I mean, there's Urizen, painted by a
Los-like imaginative prophet guy, scoping things out from heaven... things
are nice up in the sky, aren't they? Zeus was King of the Gods, too.
Everything must seem to him like simple blue, brown, and white fluffy
clouds moving all over his creation. But that's a compass, not
thunderbolts, that he's handling. This is *The Age of Reason*, as Blake's
friend Thomas Paine was titling a piece that very same year (1794), is it
not? But even though Urizen, from his point of view, is trying to...
protect?... or delineate cleanly with his compass?... from the snake's
point of view he might have just thrown one too many a... thunderbolt? Poor
snake, a creature which lives most of its belly life on the dirt of the
earth, or wrapped around trees, to get riled like that! Poor Urizen, up in
the clouds, not knowing what on EARTH is going on! Although he sure looks
confident about it all. Kind of like... opening the curtain.

Turning to the Preludium plate, kind of a "Hark, The Herald Revolutionary
Angels Sing..." or is it the opening chords to Beethoven's 5th that would
aurally accompany this visual?... I sense visual expectancy, as well as the
need for that glittering *knife* by the African-looking man, as I start to
read the truly demented tale of poor Orc's awakening. The visual, and then
the poetry, which is literally *below* the main visual (what's going on,
under the surface, friends?), as well as the creepy visual bottom below the
text... kind of a flying tombstone and... an upside down frogman trying to
balance on a dunce cap?

Other views?

-Randall Albright

        "Something in the night, something in the day.
        Nothing is wrong, but darling, something's in the way.
        There's slaughter in the air. Protest on the wind.
        Someone else inside me. Someone could get skinned. How?"
                ---David Bowie, from "Beauty and the Beast", _Heroes_

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 12:25:20 -0400
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: RE: Watt's View
Message-Id: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Absolutely, Jim Watt.

To quote an entirely appropriate person on this subject:

        "James was fully aware of recent attempts to explain and treat
pathological mentality. 'In the relief of certain hysterics by handling the
buried idea whether as in Freud... or Janet... we see a portent of these
new discoveries. The awful becomes relatively trivial.' But he would
caution his audience not to blindly accept or reject any one theory. He was
uneasy with Freud's theory that 'hysteria is obsession not by demons, but
by [a] fixed idea of the person that has dropt down.' For 'to say that is
one thing and to _deny any other ways_ of phenomena is another.' And the
'other ways' he wanted to consider led into psychical research, a
'portal... into which I said I would not enter.' (Notes for Lecture 4,
'Multiple Personality')."
        ---Daniel W, Bjork, _William James, The Center of His Vision_, p.
214  (Columbia, 1988), "Conquering the Realm of Consciousness" chapter

(Bjork goes on to say that James then reversed himself and did NOT enter
the portal!)

The reason why I bring this up is James's uneasiness with Freud's summation
of complexity, and how "analysis" can try to unravel contradictory,
baffling behavior and say, "Aha! Now I've created *my system* and... that's
that!" As much as one person works hard to create constructs to view Blake,
do you really think he would want his subconscious all dissected out on the
examining table? Would it still be *alive*, then? Still, it's fun to
*speculate*, not only what it may have meant to Blake, but what these
illuminated books mean to us.

"Is that all there is? Is that all there is? If THAT'S all there is, then
let's keep dancing..."
        ---(I forget who wrote that song! Freudian slip?)

------Randall Albright

=========

Watt's comment:
>I think Both Jennifer and Randall have to be "right"; whatever in the world
>that can mean.  Remember, W.B.'s entire ouvre is consistent in one thing:
>the subversion of every claimant to authority, on the grounds that such
>claims constitute the (terrible) sin against the Holy Spirit, or, what Blake
>calls Imagination, The Poetic Genius, and the Human Form Divine.  Thus
>when Jennifer (or the British Museum, for that matter) reports that a design
>fills her with terror, what matters is that the feeling is both generated AND
>SHARED.  God Bless, in a word, all of you who let the designs penetrate
>your "armour" so that the arrows of your intellect may be fired.  What's
>exciting is the launching of them, not the question of whether they land
>inside or outside Urizen's great compass.  Jim Watt, Indiana

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 16:28:58 -0500
From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Urizen on Frontispiece...
Message-Id: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Randall wrote:

>Is it distant and terrifying to other Blake On-Line members?
>
>How much of that is based on what you know about Urizen, and not the
>picture as a standalone piece?

If I were the only person who found it distant and terrifying, would that
invalidate my experience of it?  (For the record, it's not that distant
from me at the moment:  I have a poster of it on the wall behind my
computer, so it has become a familiar part of my environment, for better or
worse.)

I don't know how much of it is based on what I know of Urizen.  I can't
remember when I first saw the painting.  But I can't separate what I see
from what I know.  I'm not saying I don't see beauty in the piece:  I see
tremendous strength in that arm wielding the compass, and I also see that
the figure himself is encircled by the sun, kneeling against its outer
boundary.  Perhaps it's an illustration of Blake's witty epigram "To God":

"If you have formd a Circle to go into
Go into it yourself & see how you would do" (E516)

OK, I'll admit my impression may be tainted by "outside" material, but why
is that wrong?  What kind of aesthetic is it that favors knowing *less*
about an artist and his work in order to have a "pure" appreciation of it?
I would also challenge the description of the plate as a "stand-alone
piece."  Yes, Blake did make separate copies of the plate, but he also used
it as the frontispiece to _Europe_, and just as we shouldn't consider the
texts without the designs, I also think designs should be read in the
contexts of the poems--not as glosses or illustrations, mind you, but as
participating in the play of contraries.

Jennifer Michael

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 14 May 97 12:53:22 PDT
From: "Izak Bouwer" 
To: "blake" 
Subject: Orc in  Africa
Message-Id: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"; X-MAPIextension=".TXT"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

    Jim Watt, in INDIANa,  jerUSAlem, thank you.  Recently
a friend from South Africa sent us a tape with another piece
by the Chronos Quartet. The piece is by Hamza El Din and
it is called "Escalay" (Waterwheel). The Quartet is assisted
by the composer playing the "tar." The composer is from the
High Aswan Dam area in Egypt. When the dam was finished,
he lost his village.
   Sometimes it seems we have to go on saying cry the beloved
continent. When I recently saw the name of the South African
ship which was sent up to the west coast of Africa to serve as
a venue for mediating the crisis in Zaire and Central Africa, I
thought  the gods must be crazy. The ship's name was the
"Outeniqua."  That is the name of one of the Khoi tribes that
inhabited the western part of Southern Africa before the white
and the black people arrived there to dominate those parts
for the last few centuries. The Khoi and the San people have
now virtually disappeared. The small bodied San were hunted
by white and black alike, and are now on the verge of extinction.
The Khoi  have intermingled with the other peoples and have
disappeared as a political force. For a ship called "Outeniqua"
to become the venue for a attempt to make peace in Central
Africa, seems to me to be a heartbreaking irony.
     Heartbreaking up to a point also Pam van Schaik's lament
about the violence in South Africa. (The violence is to a degree
fuelled by the unrest in Central Africa. It is apparently now quite
usual to meet workers in South Africa that can talk French.
Unless the new SA government take stern measures to control
peoples, like the old regime before them, this influx will continue
until Central Africa is stabilized.) However, the tragic violence
in the streets should not blind one to the awe-inspiring sight
of a revolutionary movement, the ANC, publicly confessing their
wrongdoings before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
and asking for forgiveness. If one wants to compare the course
of the French Revolution with that of the South African revolution,
one is deeply grateful that there were no guillotines, no Jacobins,
no Robespierre, no Napoleon. Maybe just a La Fayette.

   "Have you never seen Fayette's forehead, or Mirabeau's eyes,
      or the shoulders of Target,
   "Or Bailly the strong foot of France, or Clermont the terrible
       voice, and your robes
    " Still retain their own crimson? mine never yet faded, for fire
       delights in its form.
    "But go, merciless man! enter into the infinite labyrinth of
         another's  brain
    "Ere thou measure the circle that he shall run. Go, thou cold
         recluse, into the fires
    "Of another's high flaming bosom, and return unconsum'd, and
         write laws.
     "If thou canst not do this, doubt thy theories, learn to consider
         all men as thy equals,
     "Thy brethern, and not as thy foot or thy hand, unless thou first
         fearest to hurt them."

                  ( The French Revolution - William Blake
                       E(1970)   lines 187 - 194 )

Gloudina Bouwer
          

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 20:00:16 -0500 (CDT)
From: Voice of the Devil 
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Elohim
Message-Id: 
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Here are my 2 cents on the 2 different names of deities in the OT.

We have established that sometimes God is called Elohim which in fact is a
plural word.  At other times he is called YHVH or Yaweh.  No one knows how
it is pronounced because you were never to utter the name unless you were a
priest - originally at least.

The reason for the difference is not to , at times, give greater symbolic
meaning to God.  The popular theory among Biblical scholars is that all
texts using "Elohim" were written in the Northern Israel territory, while
all the versions using YHVH were written in Southern Judah.  When Israel
was taken over by Syrians, the northern people fled south.  Of course, the
priests came too and their stories were combined.  That is why there are 2
creation versions, 2 flood versions, etc.  all included in Genesis.

The most moticable difference is at times, Aaron is with Moses and at
times he was not.  Somebody added him in later.

The popular term for the threads are simply E and J

E = northern stories using Elohim
J = southern versions using Yaweh.

but that is not all ....


the other 2 source are D and P

D = Deutoronomist (who just happened to find "the old lost law code" and
conveniently established it)

P = Priestly writings.  This is the latest of the Biblical text written at
the times in Exile from Syrian rule.  In this strand of the Bible God is
also called "Elah" -  The next step in Biblical Evolution is the Koran
where the term for God is , of course, Allah.  

The first Muslim was actually Abraham, but apparently the Jews did not
know they were really misled Muslims all along.

One thing I forgot:

The term YHVH means "I am what I am" (Popeye the Sailor Man)
The term Elohim simply means "Gods"

Adaonai means "The Lord" as does Baal - the popular Appellative to the
rival God of the times supposedly worshiped by the Canaanites.

>From Blakes work, he would mostly favor the idea of Multiple Gods, or
"poetic geniuses."  The multiple Gods beginning of Genesis can be traced
to similar Egyptian creation myths, but of course we all know that
everything in the universe leads back to Urizen !


		David Downie


www.unomaha.edu/~wwwengl/blakeweb/
The Blake Web

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 20:04:02 -0500 (CDT)
From: Voice of the Devil 
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Elohim
Message-Id: 
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

One more thought on this I neglected.

In modern translations (almost always) wher it says "God" the original
text said Elohim.  Wher it says "Lord", that is YHVH.  Elah is als
translated as Lord.

		DD

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 22:05:39 -0400
From: "Alison Bell" 
To: 
Subject: Looking for a "way in" to Blake
Message-Id: <199705150206.WAA15465@orion.netroute.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hello Blakeans,

I'm looking for a way in to Blake.  Feel I need to unravel the "characters"
before I can even attempt to read the long poems.  Also feel I need the
graphics.  I've tried "Fearful Symmetry", but it seems to be for those who
already have already internalized the poetry. (Although, as with any Frye,
it's enjoyable even without knowing the subject). I'm capable of reading
anything.  (Except Blake, it seems).  Any suggestions?

Alison Bell
abell@netroute.net

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 00:49:01 -0400 (EDT)
From: DOMESI@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Blake's work somewhere online ?
Message-Id: <970515004900_-63099576@emout02.mail.aol.com>

I'm new to Blake, in fact I only signed on because I had read 
something many years ago from Blake's work which interested me
very much.  I vowed to check him out someday, and here is where
I started.  Can I find any of Blake's work on the internet ?  Thanks.

Don

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End of blake-d Digest V1997 Issue #56
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