The Marriage of Heaven and Hell — A Memorable Fancy 7
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell — A Memorable Fancy 7
William Blake
An Angel came to me and said: "O pitiable foolish young man! O
horrible, O dreadful state! Consider the hot burning dungeon thou art
preparing for thyself to all Eternity, to which thou art going in such
career."
I said: "Perhaps you will be willing to show me my eternal lot, and we
will contemplate together upon it, and see whether your lot or mine is
most desirable."
So he took me through a stable, and through a church, and down into
the church vault, at the end of which was a mill; through the mill we
went, and came to a cave; down the winding cavern we groped our tedious
way, till a void boundless as a nether sky appeared beneath us, and we
held by the roots of trees, and hung over this immensity; but I said:
"If you please, we will commit ourselves to this void, and see whether
Providence is here also; if you will not, I will." But he answered: "Do
not presume, O young man; but as we here remain, behold thy lot, which
will soon appear when the darkness passes away."
So I remained with him sitting in the twisted root of an oak; he was
suspended in a fungus, which hung with the head downward into the deep.
By degrees we beheld the infinite abyss, fiery as the smoke of a
burning city; beneath us at an immense distance was the sun, black but
shining; round it were fiery tracks on which revolved vast spiders,
crawling after their prey, which flew, or rather swum, in the infinite
deep, in the most terrific shapes of animals sprung from corruption;
and the air was full of them, and seemed composed of them. These are
Devils, and are called powers of the air. I now asked my companion
which was my eternal lot. He said: "Between the black and white
spiders."
But now, from between the black and white spiders, a cloud and fire
burst and rolled through the deep, blackening all beneath so that the
nether deep grew black as a sea, and rolled with a terrible noise.
Beneath us was nothing now to be seen but a black tempest, till looking
East between the clouds and the waves, we saw a cataract of blood mixed
with fire, and not many stones' throw from us appeared and sunk again
the scaly fold of a monstrous serpent. At last to the East, distant
about three degrees, appeared a fiery crest above the waves; slowly
it reared like a ridge of golden rocks, till we discovered two globes
of crimson fire, from which the sea fled away in clouds of smoke; and
now we saw it was the head of Leviathan. His forehead was divided into
streaks of green and purple, like those on a tiger's forehead; soon we
saw his mouth and red gills hang just above the raging foam, tinging
the black deeps with beams of blood, advancing toward us with all the
fury of a spiritual existence.
My friend the Angel climbed up from his station into the mill. I
remained alone, and then this appearance was no more; but I found
myself sitting on a pleasant bank beside a river by moonlight, hearing
a harper who sung to the harp; and his theme was: "The man who never
alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the
mind."
But I arose, and sought for the mill, and there I found my Angel, who,
surprised, asked me how I escaped.
I answered: "All that we saw was owing to your metaphysics; for when
you ran away, I found myself on a bank by moonlight, hearing a harper.
But now we have seen my eternal lot, shall I show you yours?" He
laughed at my proposal; but I by force suddenly caught him in my arms,
and flew Westerly through the night, till we were elevated above the
earth's shadow; then I flung myself with him directly into the body
of the sun; here I clothed myself in white, and taking in my hand
Swedenborg's volumes, sunk from the glorious clime, and passed all the
planets till we came to Saturn. Here I stayed to rest, and then leaped
into the void between Saturn and the fixed stars.
"Here," said I, "is your lot; in this space, if space it may be
called." Soon we saw the stable and the church, and I took him to the
altar and opened the Bible, and lo! it was a deep pit, into which I
descended, driving the Angel before me. Soon we saw seven houses of
brick. One we entered. In it were a number of monkeys, baboons, and
all of that species, chained by the middle, grinning and snatching at
one another, but withheld by the shortness of their chains. However, I
saw that they sometimes grew numerous, and then the weak were caught
by the strong, and with a grinning aspect, first coupled with and then
devoured by plucking off first one limb and then another till the body
was left a helpless trunk; this, after grinning and kissing it with
seeming fondness, they devoured too. And here and there I saw one
savourily picking the flesh off his own tail. As the stench terribly
annoyed us both, we went into the mill; and I in my hand brought the
skeleton of a body, which in the mill was Aristotle's Analytics.
So the Angel said: "Thy phantasy has imposed upon me, and thou oughtest
to be ashamed."
I answered: "We impose on one another, and it is but lost time to
converse with you whose works are only Analytics."
* * * * *
"I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of themselves
as the only wise; this they do with a confident insolence sprouting
from systematic reasoning.
"Thus Swedenborg boasts that what he writes is new; though it is only
the contents or index of already published books.
"A man carried a monkey about for a show, and because he was a little
wiser than the monkey, grew vain, and conceived himself as much
wiser than seven men. It is so with Swedenborg; he shows the folly
of churches, and exposes hypocrites, till he imagines that all are
religious, and himself the single one on earth that ever broke a net.
"Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new truth. Now
hear another: he has written all the old falsehoods.
"And now hear the reason: he conversed with Angels who are all
religious, and conversed not with Devils who all hate religion, for he
was incapable through his conceited notions.
"Thus Swedenborg's writings are a recapitulation of all superficial
opinions, and an analysis of the more sublime, but no further.
"Have now another plain fact: any man of mechanical talents may from
the writings of Paracelsus or Jacob Behmen produce ten thousand
volumes of equal value with Swedenborg's, and from those of Dante or
Shakespeare an infinite number.
"But when he has done this, let him not say that he knows better than
his master, for he only holds a candle in sunshine."
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