LOS.
From The First Book of Urizen.
Thus Rintrah gave Abstract Philosophy to Brahma in the East, and it is defective because it is abstract. The same applies to all modern theosophical revivals of Hindoo religion. An abstraction for Blake was a falling away from concrete reality, and he found his deliverance in the Christian doctrine of God.
Palamabron, another son of Los, gave abstract Law to Trismegistus, Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato. Abstract Law is also negative, and therefore Orc (passion) finds himself chained down with the chain of Jealousy, and howls in impotent rage.
Sotho teaches Odin a Code of War which at any time may become the philosophy of a nation.
All these, abstract philosophy, abstract law, the Mahometan Bible, Codes of War, with the Churches, Hospitals, Castles, Palaces, which they involve, while seeking to catch the joys of eternity, serve in reality to obliterate and erase eternity altogether, and the children of men schooled in these philosophies behold the vast of Nature shrunk before their shrunken eyes. After the shrinkage there can only arise a philosophy of the five senses, and then Newton and Locke, especially Locke, Rousseau and Voltaire, have it all their own way.
From all this Blake looked for deliverance to the thought-creating fires of Orc, which had flared up in France, and might be expected to spread over Europe, and set even Asia in a conflagration. The Kings of Asia, snug in their ancient woven dens, are startled into self-exertion, and emerging uneasily from their dens, call on kings, priests, counsellors and privy admonishers of men to use their immemorial rights to teach the Mortal Worms, and keep them in the paths of slavery. Happily, Orc’s fires are insatiable. Raging in European darkness, he arose like a pillar of fire above the Alps, and, while “milk and blood and glandous wine in rivers rush,” led the wild dance on mountain, dale, and plain, till the sullen earth shrunk away, and there dawned the eternal day.
The Book of Los (engraved 1795) begins with the lament of Eno, aged Mother, as she recalls the “Times remote, when love and joy were adoration and none impure were deemed.” For now, alas! Los, who alone could teach joy and liberty, is bound “in a chain and compelled to watch Urizen’s shadow.” Yet he cannot be bound for ever. Maddened by hard bondage, he rends asunder the vast Solid that has bound him, only to fall through the horrible void of error—“Truth has bounds, Error none”—till his contemplative thoughts arise and throw out some sort of standing-ground amidst the dire vacuity. Urizen by his contemplative thoughts, it will be remembered, had created “a wide World of solid obstruction.” Now the two dæmons become rivals, and the grim conflict of the ages is waged incessantly. Los with hammer and tongs organizes lungs (understanding, see Swedenborg), and some Light even appears; but the book closes with no sign of the ultimate triumph of Los, for Los and Urizen are here rivals: there can be no victory until they cease to be rivals, and re-enter into the union of the eternal order.
The Book of Ahania (engraved 1795) gives the story of Fuzon, Urizen’s most fiery son, and therefore the one most obnoxious to his curse. He is mortally wounded by a poisoned rock hurled at his bosom from his father’s bow, and his corse is nailed to the topmost stem of the Tree of Mystery, which is religion. Then follows the sad and beautiful lament of Ahania—the wife and emanation of Urizen, and mother of the murdered Fuzon. She recalls, like Eno, the former days, when Urizen stood in the divine order, and she, his lover and wife, joyed in the transports of love, when her heart leaped at the lovely sound of his footsteps, and she kissed the place whereon his bright feet had trod; when she knew the thrilling joys of motherhood, and nursed her Babes of bliss on her full breasts. These things were now but a memory. Urizen with stern jealous cruelty had put her away, compelling her to walk weeping over rocks and dens, through valleys of death, a shadow upon the void, and on the verge of nonentity, a deep Abyss dividing her from her eternal love. Thus she weeps and laments, wearing a sorrow’s crown of sorrows, the remembering happier things.
These short prophetic books, though entirely congenial to the author, were written in a tongue unknown to the public, general or particular. There was every sign that Blake would continue to produce more works, and even on a much larger scale, in this particular kind of composition, and the signs were equally clear that he must look to something else to procure the wherewithal that would enable him and his wife to live.
This something was, of course, engraving, but even the demand for his engraving was growing less, and the grim spectre of poverty made his unwelcomed and uncalled-for appearance along with the spectres whom Blake could command. Over this oppressive and grinding spectre he had no command at all.