Allen Ginsberg’s 1979 Naropa lecture on William Blake’s Vala or The Four Zoas continues from here
Student: What about….
AG: Yeah?
Student: What about “the Circle of Destiny”?
AG: Well, do we want to get into that yet? Yeah, okay.
Student: Would that be comparable to….
AG: Okay, finally to crack the book: “Circle of Destiny”, let’s see what it says. I give up. Is it going to be in here? Maybe it won’t be in here. We’ll be stuck.
Student: Oh, it is.
AG: “Circle of Destiny”. Let’s see. “Circle of Destiny is revolving world of matter with its system of cause and effect.” – Karma – “revolving world of matter” – (for the Buddhists in class, (the) Circle of Destiny is karma).
“When Enion separated from Tharmas, he groaned weeping, “‘then bending from his Clouds he stoopd his innocent head, and stretching out his holy hand in the vast Deep sublime/ Turnd round the circle of Destiny with tears & bitter sighs/ And said. Return O Wanderer when the Day of Clouds is o’er.'”
Well, that’s what we’ve just read. Fine.
“Enion,” (the Emanation), “labored nine days, ‘But on the tenth trembling morn the Circle of Destiny (was) Complete.'” – (That’s Four Zoas, Book I, line 87) – “Then the Daughters of Beulah, ‘Creating Spaces lest they fall into Eternal Death, the Circle of Destiny complete they gave to it a Space and namd the Space Ulro.”
So that the circle of karmic destiny – cause and effect, actually, material cause and effect – is this material world, Ulro. Ulro, sort of the lowest intestinal area in the cosmological man, is the Circle of Destiny, of cause and effect, caused by Enion. Well, in the beginning caused by the separation (if we want to take it to be soft erotic desire) from the body, or the division or some conflict between them, or some mutual rejection, or the body’s rejection, the character of Tharmas’s rejection of his feelings, or his erotic feelings. Because he thought too much and became a Spectre of thought – his head in the clouds, “bending from his Clouds he stoopd his innocent head.”
So what did he do? He turned around, stretched out his holy hand and turned round in a circle. So the body turning around in the circle, surveying the space around, that would be?
Student: Yeah…. to create the Circle of Destiny
AG: Yeah, he immediately then labored nine days to complete. He turned round the circle – he indicated the circle by turning around. He indicated the circle, according to the text.
“It is probably not pertinent”, says Damon,“but when Urizen casts out Ahania” – remember Ahania? – Who was Ahania? I forgot. We just read her book.
Student: Pleasure.
AG: Huh
Student(s): Pleasure !
AG: Pleasure, right. When Urizen casts out his Emanation, when Urizen casts out Ahania – ‘The bounds of Destiny were broken” and Urizen himself fell.” – (So that’s another use of the Destiny, or the bounds of Destiny, or the Circle of Destiny. When Urizen rejected pleasure, and when the body rejected its sexual energy, the Circle of Destiny was formed. The circle of cause and effect, the ineluctable karmic claustrophobia was formed. No wonder he went to sleep. Well, literally, psychologically, as soon as that claustrophobia that was the Fall (or, part of the Fall) ..as soon as the claustrophobia and heaviness of the clouds of thought fell on him, when he realized the space around him was now closed-in to cause-and-effect, and he was no longer free, and also separated from his own energy, he fell asleep. So his energy then wove what? A Spectre issued from his feet in flames of energy – fire. The energy came out of his feet. The energy left his body and came out his feet, which is a weird idea that Blake has. There it’s probably part of a big system.
to be continued