AG: Well, okay, let’s try and get into Europe. I wish people would (do the reading). But please do check it out. Look up the references for this. Because Europe and Asia and Africa which are coming up, are the most dense and complicated, before we get into Urizen. I know Urizen inside out, so I can do that, easy. I got that all ready. But I’ve always had a little bit of trouble with Europe and its companions, Asia and Africa and The Song of Los , and they seem to be pretty solid, thick, fast takes on spiritual history – Spenglerian spiritual history, cyclic history. And it might be interesting (to figure these out) because they’re so short you probably could master them or figure them out without too much trouble.
But we begin with “Preludium”:
” The nameless shadowy female rose out from the breast of Orc..” – (See, revolution gave birth to a “nameless shadowy female.” His Emanation. And I think it is Thirolatha. I’m not sure. Where did I get that? It’s the nameless female. We had a nameless female at the beginning of … where did we have the last nameless female? The shadowy female. Do you remember? At the beginning of America I think. In the “Preludium” to America wasn’t there one?
Student: Yeah.
AG: “The shadowy daughter of Urthona.” That was unawakened nature, fallen nature, blind nature, or, let us say, the political nature before the revolution. Right? A nature that is waiting to be roused by Orc. “The shadowy daughter of Urthona” – the imagination – “stood before red Orc,” the revolution. Here we have “The nameless shadowy female rose out from the breast of Orc” – so it’s some Emanation of his own energy.
“Her snaky hair brandishing in the winds of Enitharmon;/ And thus her voice arose./O mother Enitharmon wilt thou bring forth other sons?/To cause my name to vanish, that my place may not be found./ For I am faint with travel!/Like the dark cloud disburdend in the day of dismal thunder./My roots are brandish’d in the heavens…” – (See, it’s all mysterious. What does it all mean? So let’s read it and then let’s find out who Enitharmon is and who the shadowy female is. Just his first plate, see?
“My roots are brandish’d in the heavens. my fruits in earth beneath/ Surge, foam, and labour into life, first born & first consum’d!/ Consumed and consuming..” – (It sounds like some by-product of revolution. Like first-born and first-consumed. Like some abortive feminine feeling liberty, but abortive because it’s in the fury of the revolution).
Student: (What) period in the revolution here?)
AG: Pardon me?
Student: (Doesn’t the fury of a revolution give way to organization?)
AG: Yes. So it’s sort of an Imagination or Emanation of revolution, like, say, the first days of the Iranian Revolution.
Student: Um-hmm.
AG: And then it’s a week later and now the parties are separating out the different aspects. The different Zoas are now separating out. The different families within the Revolution are now separating out and beginning to contend for power.
So this might have been the first glimpse. But we’ll have to look it up to see what the interpreters say, unless you want to read all through Blake and then come back, which is what I’m doing, actually.
“(W)ilt thou bring back other sons?” – ( beside Orc, beside Revolution)… “My roots are brandish’d in the heavens. my fruits in earth beneath/ Surge, foam, and labour into life, first born & first consum’d!/ Consumed and consuming!/ Then why shouldst thou accursed mother bring me into life?”- (That’s funny) – “I wrap my turban of thick clouds around my lab’ring head;/ And fold the sheety waters as a mantle round my limbs./ Yet the red sun and moon,/And all the overflowing stars rain down prolific pains..” – (Well, the red sun and moon would be Orc and revolution, the turban of thick clouds would be the old Urizenic order and law. So maybe this is still nature wrapped in the mystery of Jehovah-Urizen-God-Religion).
“Unwilling I look up to heaven! unwilling count the stars!” – (Stars were, remember, symbols of intellect). Unwilling counting…”Sitting in fathomless abyss of my immortal shrine./I seize their burning power/And bring forth howling terrors, all devouring fiery kings..” – (Hmmm) – “Devouring & devoured roaming on dark and desolate mountains/. In forest of eternal death, shrieking in hollow trees..” – (Sounds like the illusions of Urizen and all the kings that Urizen brought forth. So this is maybe really fallen nature, bringing forth authoritarian kings all over Europe, still. Or retrograde nature, unwilling to suffer the revolution).
Student: How about frustrated nature?
AG: Well, except she says, “I seize their burning power/And bring forth howling terrors.” I bring forth “all devouring fiery kings.” – Yeah, she’s saying, “O mother Enitharmon, wilt thou bring forth other sons?/To cause my name to vanish, that my place may not be found.” – She’s protesting against Enitharmon. Enitharmon is the Emanation of Los. And actually Enitharmon is beauty, I seem to remember. Is that correct?
Student: It says in the dictionary that (Enitharmon) “is Spiritual Beauty”, the Emanation yet the wife of Los.
AG: And Los is poetic imagination or human imagination, or in Buddhist terms maybe bodhicitta, or some notion of continuously growing all-pervading interpenetrating intelligence and openness that can continually create, out of the solidifications of Urizen, (so it) can unsolidify and find new space. So Los is continually imagining new space. Enitharmon is the space that he has imagined, spiritual beauty.
And the shadowy female is protesting against (it) to spiritual beauty, or Enitharmon, or the wife, or the Emanation of poetic imagination, “Are you going to have more children? Am I going to be suffering more and more? Are you going to make my name vanish?” So I think that would be the evil nature (or) nature seen as evil by the Urizenic, priestly intellect. A sort of Manichean notion, actually. Go ahead.
Student: (Isn’t it more just a plea for some sympathy)
AG: When she wraps “my turban of thick clouds around my lab’ring head,”? I don’t think so. See, she’s saying, “I am taking all of nature as a mantle around my limbs” – “And fold the sheety waters as a mantle round my limbs.” The waters of time and space, which are illusion, actually. So she’s taking on the garment of nature. She’s the appearance of nature, but it is nature that’s giving birth to “fiery devouring kings” (“howling terrors”).
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately seventy-nine-and-three-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately eighty-eight-and-a-half minutes in