AG on William Blake continues from here
AG: So the Divine Family “…drew up the Universal tent/Above High Snowdon & closd the Messengers in clouds around/ Till the time of the End. Then they Elected Seven. called the Seven/Eyes of God & the Seven lamps of the Almighty” – (That was the seven I read through before – the seven stages of experience, the seven stages of error, actually, on the road to eternity – “the Seven lamps of the Almighty.” The figure and the image is taken from the Book of Revelation and other Old Testament books, I think. “Seven/Eyes of God.” Do you know any of the Biblical references for that?
Student: Bloom says it’s Zachariah….
AG: Yeah.
Student: … and so…
AG: Do you have a Bible around?
Student: Yes.
AG: Maybe bring it in some time. We might check these out. Just check the imagery and the language …
Student: That’s straight …
AG: … parallels out.
Student: … (out of the) Bible.
AG: Yeah.
Student: He (stepped right into it)
AG: Yes.
AG: Blake is a Beulah to the Bible.
Student: There were some Indians (legends like that)
AG: Yeah.
Student: …about the seven….
AG: Seven Arrows.
Student: Right ..
AG: Does somebody know about seven and the Indians?
Then.. the Kabbalah has the seven.. [Editorial note – According to the Zohar, the most important work of the classical Kabbalah, in prayer the soul of the mystic ascends through seven celestial halls or palaces as part of its quest to unify the male and female aspects of divinity]
Helen Luster (poet-mage, sitting in on the class): No.. we have the seven palaces (or the vision in Ezekiel of the) chariot..)
AG: Do you know what they (the palaces) represent?
Helen Luster: Well, the ascent at various stages. The ascent…
AG: Yeah.
Helen Luster: … of the soul.
AG: Through those stages of error, as Blake has it?
Helen Luster: No...well..
AG: See, the curious thing in Blake’s – or at least Damon’s Blake, Damon’s version – the seven stages of experimental trial and error..
Helen Luster: (In) Ezekiel. .. He saw the chariot in a river so they had to (see it mirrored)..
AG: Uh-huh.
Helen Luster: ..and (so) you couldn’t get it direct. It had to be indirect.
AG: Uh-huh.
Student: (Then) the Seven Storey Mountain has seven..
AG: Yeah.
Student: ..seven in that..
AG: Seven Storey Mountain. Seven Veils. But what is it about seven? I don’t know numbers, but seven (is important).
Helen Luster: Seven is …traditional…(numerological)
AG: Yeah, apparently.
Helen Luster: (magic numbers)
AG: I wonder why.
Student: Three and four, I think.
Student (2) : Yeah.
Student : Three is development and the four is fullness…
Student (3): Also four elements in the mandala...
AG: Uh-huh.
Student(2): Seven is….
Student: Originally.. (even earlier perhaps).. but definitely in the Book of Revelations.
AG: Yeah. Well, presumably from there – The Buddhist version of seven is sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, mind, and storehouse consciousness. (The) unconscious….The mind, as conscious mind, that puts that senses together, like a crystal ball with five different colors under it, mixing them – the senses. That would be mind. And then some unconscious memory.
Well – “Then they Elected Seven, called the Seven/Eyes of God & the Seven lamps of the Almighty/The Seven are one within the other the seventh is named Jesus/The Lamb of God blessed for ever & he followd the Man..” – (Albion) – “.. & he followed the Man/ Who wanderd in mount Ephraim seeking a Sepulcher/Seeking death” – ( following death -“he followed Albion who wandered in Mount Ephraiam seeking death”).
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately eighty-seven minutes in and concluding at approximately ninety-and-three-quarter minutes in