Rescuing Femininity (Part XI of the 'Blake Project')

‘The great secret of morals is love; or a going-out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own.’ ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

In a certain manner of speaking, the female has zero metaphysical existence; she is insubstantial; she has no Being, no identification whatsoever with the higher sort of reality exposited by the Vedas, the Platonic Dialogues, and the Enneads. Anything feminine is entirely a fabrication of this, the natural world, which can just as easily be said to be feminine itself. These are the foundational patterns that find their way into Blake’s cosmology, particularly in the later prophetic works, where the true nature of the female is finally delineated and consequently appropriated into the overall schema.

When looking at Blake’s poetry for the first time, common interpretations lead one to immediately pick out certain social criticisms that he is making, and yet a social criticism is rarely the full extent of what he is really expounding. It is more often the case that, instead of outlining a single idea through poetic discourse, Blake is identifying multiple ideas, the most important of which is frequently the one that is most cleverly ‘hidden’, in spite of his intense dislike for the artistic obscurity that was in vogue during his time. Moreover, these ideas are probably not intended to be opaque and concealed within layers of poetic ambiguity, but have nevertheless become so merely because of developing theories of literary interpretation that, in the main, read things at a surface level, sometimes missing the most crucial point in regards to the Blakean context. So, it is not that Blake purposefully hides an essential idea, it is that they are unusual enough to become hidden by the usual modes of understanding the text and imagery.

The specific point that we are trying to get at it is, Blake’s conception of woman has been portrayed as pointedly cryptic and enigmatic; on the one hand we have the seemingly simple explanation of woman as the quintessential picture of desire, and the moral incursions that impose chastity upon her are part of the devil’s work in actuality; and, on the other hand, we see woman defined in a rather patristic light, viz. of an unhealthy, seductive force that drives man to madness and spiritual corruption; so, in other words, woman herself is the devil’s work. As is often the case in these kinds of situations, the truth resides somewhere between the two, and to resolve the dilemma, we return to the concept of the Emanation.

As the positive reflection of a man’s inner state, the emanation is beautiful, appearing in all the virtues apropos of womanhood. There is also, however, a dual possibility inherent in the emanation herself: remaining as the silver luminosity of an Eve or a Jerusalem, or degenerating into a terrible femininity a la Rahab or Vala, the manifestations of the seductive and demoralizing impulse of the female persona. Los has this to say about the unnatural deification of woman, which is precisely what the latter type demands:

'What may man be? Who can tell! but what may Woman be?

To have Power over Man from Cradle to corruptible Grave

There is a Throne in every Man, it is the Throne of God  

This Woman has claimd as her own & Man is no more!’

Thus, in worshipping woman (we can also call this pantheism, or worship of the natural world), man has shifted his attention from within (which is the realm of God and man) to without (the realm of appearance and woman); and this he has done under the supposed splendor of the ill-meaning female who has effectively beguiled him into her chains. The contrasting element is, of course, the desire for union between male and female, which is consummated and symbolized in the loving embrace of physical union; this obviously represents the reunion of the poles that obviously takes place in the symbolical, metaphysical realm. Therefore, femininity is potentiality on either front: it can be either degeneration into a living manifestation of what Blake disparagingly called the ‘Female Will’, or it can be the patient ‘Shakti’ that acts as the spiritual stimulus for man himself.

'It is the natural and mortal body that Blake loved and hated, and though the potential for spiritual regeneration lies in the physical body, the actuality does not. (The actuality is in Eternity.)’ ~ Diana Hume George

William Blake dwelled in a reactionary age where many intellectuals and sentimentalists alike responded to the Industrial Revolution in similar ways. (This is what leads Kathleen Raine to say, ‘William Blake was a traditionalist in a society that as a whole had lapsed from tradition.') One of the reactions was in the widespread and newly founded appeal for nature, going so far as to deify it in the fashion of paganism, particularly in the case of the English and French romantics. This was the greatest reason for Blake’s intense scorn for the natural world in the metaphysical sense, since he saw the devoted attention formerly devoted to God being paid to the cruel and barren affairs of nature; this was a grave betrayal. ‘Where Man is not Nature is barren’, as Blake famously stated; and yet his vitriol for the ‘visible world’ is ultimately negated when we remember the importance of viewing the physical realm through the redemptive lens of symbolism, which is the vision courtesy of divinity.

'I assert for Myself that I do not behold the Outward Creation & that to me it is a hindrance & not Action it is as the Dirt upon my feet No part of Me. What it will be Questiond When the Sun rises do you not see a round Disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea O no no I see an innumerable Company of the Heavenly host crying Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty I question not my Corporeal or Vegetative Eye any more than I would Question a Window concerning a Sight I look thro it & not with it.’

Once again, esse est percipi; the physicality provides the base, the material which our intellect works on; our vision sees through and beyond the matter and into infinity. The female is an inner part of an integral self; separate from masculinity and the apperception of the intellect, she is ontologically vacant; but when she is spiritually and physically joined with her counterpart, she has attained completion in the proper integration of Man. 

Blake's Hero (Part X of the 'Blake Project')

'I am inspired: I act not for myself; for Albions sake
I now am what I am: a horror and an astonishment.' Jerusalem

Throughout the development of his prophetic 'system', Blake continually makes use of the 'author surrogate', or the use of a character that expresses the ideas of the writer himself. For Blake, that surrogate is Los, the fallen reflection of the northern Zoa, Urthona. Los' great labour is, 'Striving with Systems to deliver Individuals from those Systems', and this takes place in the laborious network of his fiery furnaces, the creative depths likened to the metaphysical level of Hell of Jacob Boehme, an alchemist of considerable influence on Blake. Los represents the prophetic, visionary, artistic element in man; he represents man's capability of proper perception, wherein divinity is understood in beautiful, symbolic pictures and dramatic language; in short, Los represents the poetic nature and function of Blake himself.

If we recall Blake's perception of the Fall, how divinity fell along with humanity, we will remember that we are able to see merely a portion of the divine in man; Los, or the imaginative vision or power, is that portion. In The Book of Urizen, Urizen and Los are rent apart, both suffering terrible agony in the sundering; the difference is, while Los eventually recovers from his wound, Urizen never does, no matter how much he tries to treat it with 'measuring' and 'reasoning'; no matter how much Urizen endeavours to 'explore the abyss', his pain and his prolonged death remain irremediable. The significance of this essentially cosmogonic text resides in Blake's insistence on the artistic faculty as the truly divine element in man; Blake does not agree with Plato when he argues against poesis as an imitation of an imitation, or that the poets evoke beauty without realizing its divine source; instead, Blake asserts poetry, or whatever applicable form of poesis, as the sole connection between gods and men that remains standing even today. Los, unlike Plato's poets of the Republic,  is perfectly cognizant of what he is doing, and he demonstrably personifies this connection, this rainbow of 'Bifröst'; 'the swaying road to heaven'.

'...in proportion as prophecy is more perfect and august than augury, both in name and fact, in the same proportion, as the ancients testify, is madness superior to a sane mind for the one is only of human, but the other is of divine origin... he who, having no touch of the Muses' madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks that he will get into the temple by the help of art – he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted; the sane man disappears and is nowhere when he enters into rivalry with the madman.' Phaedrus, Plato

As the sole surviving 'god' in man, Los is employed in an important, magnanimous function: the resurrection of man to his primordial state. This is hardly the sentimental dreaminess of the naturalist J.J. Rousseau; this is true Christian belief at the heart of the superlative Orthodoxy, wherein resides the supreme doctrine of Jesus' death and his consequent ascension; that is to say, the doctrine of Adam's successful redemption. Labouring at his furnaces and his anvils, Los represents the one side of Boehme's God which lurks in the depths, producing the energic fire; the other side of this God must convert the infernal fire into an ecclesiastical light; in Jungian terms, this is the nominal function of ordinary consciousness when organizing the vastness of the unconscious substrata. In this way, Blake vindicates the fallen world through the very manipulation of it; Los creates prophetic meaning through seeing in the base material of the 'Mundane Shell' a wholly imaginative world, the world which will absolve the crimes of Adam and lift the Christ into spiritual and everlasting authority.

The epic poem Jerusalem portrays Albion, the characterization of both England and humanity itself, as dozy and ignorant of the Saviour's imploring speech; he becomes increasingly slumberous in the state of Ulro, the state of regeneration, eventually dying and traveling 'the passage through Eternal Death'. Throughout the entire work Los is always the sole antagonist against Albion and his terrible sons and daughters, who are also his spectres of a sort. Delving deep in his subterranean furnaces, Los exerts himself tirelessly in his effort to destroy the illusory existence and reconcile man with his emanative aspect; he as well must fight to resolve the conflict that persists between himself and his own emanation, Enitharmon. In an excited flurry of visionary proclamations and prophetic insight into the cold mists of mankind, Los frightens 'the Ghosts of Albion' in hurling his judicial hammer again and again in thunderous fury; 'These are the Demonstrations of Los, the blows of my mighty Hammer'. Los releases an incessant tirade against the fragility of man's manufactured and formless covering.

...Los beheld undaunted furious
His heavd Hammer; he swung it round & at one blow,
In unpitying ruin driving down the pyramids of pride
Smiting the Spectre on his Anvil & the integuments of his Eye
And Ear unbinding in dire pain, with many blows,
Of strict severity self-subduing, & with many tears labouring.' Jerusalem

Thus has Los attained self-mastery, destroying not only the indefinite fragments without, but also the needless portion that exists within. Enitharmon laments that, with Los once again amalgamating into Albion, she will 'vanish for ever', and then Los 'wilt Create another Female according to (his) Will'. Los answers simply, saying that 'Sexes must vanish & cease To be, when Albion arises from his dread repose', meaning that Enitharmon will no longer be a distinct figure in the world of generation, but an integral part of Los himself. Gaining back his emanation, Los makes his final speech: 'Fear not my Sons this Waking Death. He is become one with me Behold him here! we shall not Die! we shall be united in Jesus. Will you suffer this Satan this Body of Doubt that Seems but Is not To occupy the very threshold of Eternal Life'. Albion therefore awakens when time is finished, taking up his golden bow and aligning the Four Zoas in their proper locations, praising Urthona (or Los) for keeping 'the Divine Vision in time of trouble'.

'I care not whether a Man is Good or Evil; all that I care
Is whether he is a Wise Man or a Fool. Go! Put off Holiness
And put on Intellect: or my thunderous Hammer shall drive thee
To wrath which thou condemnest: till thou obey my voice'. The Command of Los

Dark Way To Paradise: Dante’s ‘Inferno’ In Light of the Spiritual Path

There are very few books in the entire history of Western literature that are more important, more iconic than the Divine Comedy, and fewer still in specifically Christian literature. Dante was hardly understood in his own time, and he remains widely misunderstood in the present time; his writing is profound, revelatory, apocalyptic, even, but nothing else can be compared with the power of his symbolic vision that quietly subsumes all individual aspects of his work into a single comprehensive worldview which is at once potently spiritual at the highest level and readily applicable to moral living. That Dante’s opus is richly symbolic need not be said; that it is universally symbolic must be said.

We entered this particular book of Mrs. Upton’s with a modest awareness of Dante’s weird and wicked world that lies beneath ours, and with hopes that were equally modest: to see Upton extract a definite link, a certain parallel between her thesis (or, Dante’s tale made clear by traditional knowledge) and the work itself. In a word, we were hoping to see the anagogic qualities of the poetry unearthed and, through traditional understanding, crystallized into an unmistakably clear statement.  What we instead discovered was that this book, which is really a series of exegetical essays, is more or less of an almost scientific nature, that the individual ‘revelations’, although written in a fairly poetic manner, were not so much part of a single linear path as they were isolated components of a meticulous dissection. We do not mean to say these things in an overbearingly negative context, merely that they were not identified and organized in the way which we were looking for, a point that we shall return to below.

Every one of the thirty-four essays (one for each Canto) attempts to interpret its respective Canto in a way that reveals its ‘multi-dimensional’ and symbolic reality; while the other ‘dimensions’ are indeed discussed, Upton rightly places foremost emphasis on the last and greatest understanding, namely, the spiritual or, in Dante’s words, the anagogical understanding. Every character of evil, every level of hell is therefore perceived to be analogous to a peculiar darkness in the spiritual state of man; this allows us to comprehend quite easily the fundamental flaws and vices that each ‘infra-human’ lapse in judgment inherently contains. In this respect, viz., pursuing higher spiritual living through the awareness of its evil antagonist, Jennifer Doane Upton is most successful.

While we were expecting René Guénon’s excellent study, The Esoterism of Dante, to be an integral reference for this book, Upton actually makes little use of Guenon; she instead elects the primary aid of the Swiss traditionalist Frithjof Schuon, even quoting him at lengths spanning several pages! Although this was undoubtedly a slight surprise to us, it did not take long to determine why Upton called upon the reverent, mystical Schuon instead of the coolly rational and supremely metaphysical Guénon: the amorous work of Dante demands poetic justice first, which evidently is its own metaphysic.

A central identity of Dante is, firstly, his ideal of love; everything that is good essentially derives from the love of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, and everything that is evil essentially derives from the inversion of love, which takes the form of some cruel and hideous parody of the ideal love. Upton is quick to seize the importance of this, and nowhere are her observations more precise, more astute, and more relevant than when she is detailing the relations between the heavenly ideal and its infernal parody, and this is precisely because the greatest meaning of this book (and, indeed, of the first third of the Comedy itself), resides in the telling of evil, which is also another strange paradox of Christianity, and the justification of ‘evil’ thereof. The possibility of the good in the created world is not possible at all without the possibility of evil in this world, which is perhaps the clearest statement that Upton never made.

The single major complaint that we can invoke against this neat study is the one mentioned earlier, that its studies are largely limited to each particular Canto. Any common thread that can be found between the covers are there only because any real undertaking of the Inferno would not allow them to be omitted since they are so finely ingrained into the text; Upton fails to notice the many parallels and the ‘symbolic stream’ that underlines the poetry and thus fails to form any definite and rigid correspondence between Dante and her interpretation; to speak metaphorically, which is generally how things are best understood, Upton lights up a series of waypoints along the shore when Dante paves the continuous path with a radiant and shimmering glow that leads the follower to new depths, to new heights. Notwithstanding this rather serious shortcoming, Upton nevertheless manages to illustrate the divine mysteries and the cosmic symbols of Dante in a special clarity that is seldom seen in our day, in our age.  

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Relocating the Fragments (Part IX of the 'Blake Project')

'I see the Four-fold Man. The Humanity in deadly sleep

 And its fallen Emanation. The Spectre & its cruel Shadow.' Jerusalem

In the course of the Fall, various illusory entities are conceived through an identification of something inside the Self with something completely outside of the Self, which is non-existence; thus, though femininity is actually an integral element of the original man,  she takes physical form when man mistakes his creation, his own identity for something beyond himself; these 'illusory entities', taking on characters in Blake's cast, consist of the different roles and obstacles that play a part in confronting the psychic self. As these are figures conjured in delusion, the task of the presently deformed individual is, inevitably, either: (1) their reconciliation with total consciousness, or (2) their immediate destruction.

The first order of personification is the Emanation, which represents an inner portion of the preconditioned individual that has been dislocated from its true place.  The emanation has become an extension of the perceiving self, and is therefore an object of beauty that the perceiver longs to identify and reconcile with himself. This idea finds a Classical precursor in Plato's Phaedrus, where the one horse driving the chariot strives upward in a clam and determined temperance while the other rushes madly toward the ground in sensual violence. The meaning of this all resides in the method of pursuit: will consciousness observe the emanation rightly and give serenades in gentle innocence; or will it perceive this portion of itself as merely sensual, a physical body to enjoy in plain and riotous pleasure? While Blake ultimately sees a different means than Plato, who is far more conventional in his advocation of a serene asceticism, both are agreed inasmuch as beauty belongs more to an innate 'vision' than it does to an instinctual attachment to the flesh.

'Awake! Awake Jerusalem! O lovely emanation of Albion

Awake and overspread all nations as in Ancient Time

For lo! The Night of Death is past and the Eternal Day

Appears upon our Hills: Awake Jerusalem, and come away.' Jerusalem

For each of the primary psychic components, there is another that forms during the Fall; this is called the Spectre. One purpose of the spectre is to depict a clouded and disfigured representation of the original identity; for example, spectres of Urizen, whose right place is as 'schoolmaster', manifest themselves as Bromion, Jehovah, 'Nobodaddy', even as 'Urizen' himself, in typical Blakean confusion. All of these characters share an ugly penchant for collectivized order based on 'jealousy', social tyranny, and moral absolutism; they are usually dramatically opposed by Los and the powers of imagination, or by Orc and the ferocity of adolescent desire. Another purpose of the spectre is similar to that of the emanation, where it is a separate body yet part of the perceiver, and yet is different in its constitution, intent, and modes of behaviour. The spectre brings out the negative qualities dormant in the individual and tries to use these to dominate him; this is why the spectre is, in the allegorical style of Hawthorne, the archetypal doppelgänger. The spectre is active and often malevolent, aspiring to distract the subject from his emanation, his other half, which contrasts deeply with the passivity of the emanation herself.  Milton combats his spectre Satan, for example, who attempts to preserve his governance over Milton  in a way much like how a virus controls its host body; Satan, or 'Selfhood', is the Jungian 'shadow', and is defeated through its direct and uncompromising appraisal. Milton does exactly this; by finally facing (or becoming conscious of) Satan as the dark and inverted hero figure, and beseeching the aid of the highest power to 'cast off Selfhood' (the realization of humility), Milton, having approached and conquered the deepest nightmare of his being, is at long last amongst the 'Redeemed' of humanity. 

'There is a Negation, there is a Contrary

The Negation must be destroyd to redeem the Contraries

The Negation is the Spectre, the Reasoning Power in Manifestation                                                      

This is a false Body: an Incrustation over my Immortal                                                                         

Spirit; a Selfhood which must be put off & annihilated always

To cleanse the Face of my Spirit by Self-Examination.' Milton a Poem

The human self is at the center of the cosmos, an imaginative eye peering at everything surrounding it; a gloomy shade at the corner of perception gradually coalesces into into an oppressive darkness, suffocating the self beneath an elusive myriad of spectral forms. But then, shining visions erupt, piercing the worldly shell covering the mind's eye, informing humanity of a greater, transcendent realm; informing humanity that its existence is not actually meaningless. This force of darkness is Blake's antagonistic world of Spectres and Shadows, the illusory images born of a fallen race; the occasional glimpses of a higher state are the Emanations, the perennial reminders of (1) humanity's original state, and (2) of our persisting telos that perpetually beckons us to places beyond the mundane prison of time and space. When we earlier declared that the perceiving individual must either reconcile or destroy these exteriorized images, we were not telling the entire truth; for, in true reconciliation with the emanation, which once again resolves the crisis between the internal and the external through their reunion, the harmful and threatening aspects of the spectre are immediately destroyed, leaving the embattled individual finally at peace with both himself and the mysterious world surrounding him. Thus, psychic reconciliation necessarily includes the idea of destroying that which does not inhere in the fundamental framework of man's total Self.

Jesus Christ

'Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.' Mark 10: 14

What is possibly the most remarkable trait about Jesus Christ's position in Blake's cosmology is that he is quite likely the only dominant character whose function and purpose remains static throughout the poems, a very telling observation considering the protean nature of Blake's rather fluid dramatis personae, where any particular spirit or person might represent one thing in the first instance, and then something entirely different in the second. In sharp contrast to these vacillations in symbolic reference, Jesus Christ does not change in an substantive aspect.

The primary purpose of the Christ is, of course, soteriological; he is the true Messiah who arose from the passivity of death to ascend into spiritual activity, viz. the kingdom of Heaven. This perennial 'hero image' achieves its effect of universal salvation through a vicarious relationship between the resurrection of Christ and the poetic, individual understanding of the iconic symbol that the apotheosis presents; Blake is in full comprehension of this process when he assigns Jesus the herculean role of lifting the newly aware individual into spiritual awakening, as in the end of Jerusalem, and the supplementary role of the Judge, the supreme arbiter of the Just and the Wicked, as in the 'Designs of the Last Judgment'. In either role, Jesus adopts a position of governance that encompasses all humanity either symbolically, through the metaphor as Jesus the universal redeemer, or quasi-literally, through the judgment of all mankind.

This unique task leads us to the deliberation over Christ's greatest function in Blake's vast symbology: the ultimate assimilator (or 'subsumer') of man as an individual. We briefly mentioned above the problem of retaining particularity whilst ascending into universality without offering the clear and specific solution; Blake says that, 'As a mas is So he Sees', so how does this man, who has a different perspective than everyone else, gain entrance into the universal humanity, the 'Four-fold Man' which is more or less wholly unconditioned? The 'more or less' actually exonerates Blake of this issue, since the general form of humanity really is ascribed with a precise and definite structure that directly corresponds with the body parts of the human figure. Thus, every individual has his own unique role (i.e., part of the hand, foot, mind, etc.) to fulfill in order to become an integral part of the single body. This 'inner destiny' is achieved through the Christian relationship with the Godhead, Christ Himself, who subsumes the particular into the universal via the particular's peculiar mode of higher hermeneutics, or the realization of his spiritual and natural constitution according to the principial dharma (crudely translated as 'law') underlying all phenomenal reality. In this way (which is presently explained through a much heavier means than the lucid poetry itself), where the relative is reconciled with the absolute through the identification of his core being with that of the singular 'Four-fold Man', Blake has truly created his own comprehensive 'system' that is, once again, paralleled to Platonic thinking in both the West and the East.

'As all men are alike (tho' infinitely various) So all Religions & all similars have one source.' ~ 'There is No Natural Religion'

Finally, it is no coincidence that the character Jesus Christ enters the act near the end, or that his role in 'Vision of the Last Judgment' is central; the significance lies in the fact that the individual never really beholds Christ until the last vestige of worldly existence is stripped away, and then the shining glory of his almighty redeemer is all that he sees. This strongly relates to the white of Apocalypse, where everything somehow conditioned is eradicated in the pearly sheen of spiritual catharsis. Until this final point where we may behold the awesome beauty of Heaven itself, we can only understand its spiritual nature through symbolic reality, and the only way to understand the ladder that ascends to Heaven is through the symbolic reality of Christ Himself.

Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: over these the second death hath no power; but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years. Revelation 20:6

Nokturnal Mortum - The Voice of Steel

Black metal from eastern Europe has been typically plagued by two main points of sickness: (1) the inability to transcend the politics of any which ideology (National Socialism being the obvious villain) and (2) its incompetence in the proper integration of a folk tradition with the black metal aesthetic. The results of most efforts to do so may indeed incorporate 'folkish' elements and some nice, soothing melodies, but the synthesis ultimately falls flat due to the blindness in regard to the true nature of metal itself.

The Voice of Steel is a clear and shining exception, and that is mostly because it is not actually 'metal' as we formally know it. Sure, the instruments and the technique are unchanged, but what's different is that the music is imbued with a spirit altogether foreign to its foundation. Whereas metal has been essentially of a Dionysian nature, id est one of impulse and rebellion, of darkness and fire, Nokturnal Mortum has somehow managed to create something of which we might call Apollonian, or something pertaining to authority and tradition, to light and order. 

The musical elements found on this album are many and diverse; there's the folk instrumentation, of course, but there are also bits of rock to be discerned, even some 'psychedelic' solo sections reminiscent of Pink Floyd. Now, usually when a band tries to merge numerous styles into a single composition, the attempt fails utterly; modern popular music is littered with countless barren graveyards testifying to this truth. The Voice of Steel, on the other hand, is, metaphorically speaking, a polygamous marriage of several female entities cohesively married to the central Apollonian principle; that is to say, multiple forms are neatly combined and organized by the album's artistic vision, which evidently results in something that is as varied as it is unified. Furthermore, as a note of interest, nascent legitimate genres of music seldom arise spontaneously but are instead effected by a number of prior traditions; heavy metal, for example, was born out of Classical, rock music, and, one might argue, the blues. 

One of the most appealing aspects of The Voice of Steel is the strength of its structure, of its compositional organization; the entire album (and the duration of which is over an hour long) flows with a special clarity that makes it a truly singular listen. Every song is markedly different from the other, and yet every song is tied tightly together by this unifying bond that runs throughout the album; the resultant impression on the listener is that he knows without question that each song is a definitive component of the entire work. Moreover, much like the surprisingly similar Belus, the album really sounds like a Classical symphony: a theme is presented, then developed, then presented again with a new understanding of it. These themes, along with their corresponding melodies, are dramatic and profound, and they are all the more so given their specific context in the album proper; and, while we are admittedly unaware of the lyrics so far, they (the themes / melodies) presumably accord with the conceptual framework, which is indicated not only by the music itself, but by such song titles as 'By Path of the Sun' and 'White Tower', two striking examples of a distinctly Apollonian nature. 

Much like the aforementioned Belus, The Voice of Steel expands upon a tried and tested form with a relatively novel idea; the effect is something that we have never heard before, something that we are not quite able to recognize. There is a difference between this album and Burzum's new one, however: while Belus is at once the final nail in the coffin of the original Norwegian black metal movement and the potential seed of an art from still to come, The Voice of Steel is simultaneously the synthesis and transcendence of two historical genres, and, while it may not exactly be that possibly incoming art form, it nevertheless aggrandizes the evidence that it is indeed coming.

A Monistic Dualism

'Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, love and Hate, are necessary to human existence.' ~ 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'

As inhabitants of this physical plane, we are necessarily subject to the unfortunate laws that arise from our own conditioned state, the most potent of which is the divisive force of duality, which separates an essence complete in itself into two miserable halves that both hate and love each other; this is the fundamentally Platonic foundation that Blake inherits as he endeavours to construct his own visionary edifice that will potentially relieve us of this ailment.

More than anything else circumstantial, Blake was affected by Emmanuel Swedenborg, the Swedish mystic who, much like Blake himself, could allegedly converse with angels, and peer into the metaphysical realms of Heaven and Hell. Although taking an esoteric and somewhat heterodox approach to Biblical mythology, Swedenborg was essentially 'conservative', and therefore moralistic, in his theological doctrine. While Blake admits that he was positively influenced by Swedenborg in his earlier years, he eventually realizes that he represents the Church's ethical absolutism of assigning terms 'Good' and 'Evil', positing a corresponding spiritual realm for each that symbolically determines an individual's interior constitution. Hence, from this realization forward, Blake gives Swedenborg and others of his ilk the epithet, 'Angels', or those upholding the sterile status quo, and calls himself and other Orc-like spirits 'Devils', or those bringing forth new creation, thereby disturbing the prevailing order of things. Thus, a first duality is formed.

No other writing of Blake's is so profoundly satirical (not that this is the only satire – An Island in the Moon wonderfully encapsulates a Swift-esque laugh at the expense of popular philosophers) while staying true to the predominant idea being expressed than 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell', a poem proclaiming doom and joy, death and rebirth, reason and emotion; 'Opposition is true friendship'. Devils and Angels (whom Blake also calls the Prolific and the Devouring - a further link to Platonism) are inseparably chained, and each movement that one makes is countered by the other, thus maintaining the bondage that conditions all in time and space. As this is highly reminiscent of the Urizen-Orc duality, we can expect that there is indeed a possibility of escape from this particular slavery as well.

Traditional mysticism, which is not at odds with Platonism, chiefly upholds the value of union, of the concept of achieving a state of Transcendence to the point of a metaphysical comprehension that goes beyond all physical and mental conditioning and becomes purest light, which is true reality. In addition to this, Plato outlines a cosmogonic theory in the Symposium which depicts man as a fallen being split in twain, his other half becoming trapped  in feminine form. Blake adopts the latter theory with the former mystical ideal and creates a system that is well-aligned with those of tradition, and is yet perfectly unique in its own way; in his 'Book of Urizen', for example, Enitharmon becomes 'the first female now separate' when Urizen, or here the Gnostic demiurge, creates something outside of himself, namely, the world.

'I must Create a System, or be enslav'd by another Mans

I will not Reason & Compare: my business is to Create.' Jerusalem

Blake immediately encounters a problem in creating his 'system' whenever he recalls the imperative interest he has in the differentiated individual; for, while trying to merge the conditioned into the Platonic All, identity must inevitably be destroyed. Or must it? Blake questions this inevitability the same way that he questioned 'General Forms': the mass is not alive simply because it possesses universality, which of course leads to tyranny, but because of the particulars that together integrate the whole: 'General Forms have their vitality in Minute Particulars'. So, now that we discover Blake's rather ambitious project is indeed possible, our task now will be to discern how it is possible, or, to put it neatly, how exactly does the fallen man depart from his conditional duality to attain the integral 'monism' proclaimed in the Gospels?

'Neither shall they say, lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of Heaven is within you.' Luke 17: 21