'Sconfitta', William Blake
[ORIGINALLY POSTED AS A MESSAGE BOARD COMMENT ON THE ABOVE ILLUSTRATION AT
http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2008/08/07/image-of-the-day-sconfitta-by-william-blake]
The image titled 'Sconfitta' is dark, powerful and beautiful - typical of Blake's best work. It is wonderful to see so many people reconsidering Blake - it was his own intention to "speak to future generations via a sublime allegory"
Without knowing anything of Blake we can see this much:
On the surface we see a man engaged in worshipping or appealing to a dark Sun.
At second glance the geometry of the picture reveals the Sun is a big, black cross with a circle at the centre, suggesting he is engaged in Son worship, and that which he worships is not fully illumninated to him, it is shrouded in darkness.
It could be the print quality, but one can discern a crucifix that has been painted over, or subtley suggested at within the Sun upon the hill.
Wanbliska (a contributor to the message borad where I origainlly posted this article) mentions the Four Zoas central to Blake's more cryptic and elaborate later works. In 'Jerusalem' Blake gives us a diagram of The Zoas as four interlocking circles, at the centre is a single egg containing the words 'Adam' and 'Satan' - like the familiar Vesica Piscis diagram, also frequently appearing in Blake's work, this fourfold equivalent encodes the nature of the Son of God (I have reproduced this figure further down the page).
BELOW: The top right figure is the Vesica Piscis
Blake says 'Good is the Passive that obeys reason, Evil is the active springing from Energy' - like Yin and Yang they are different halves of the same thing, as depicted in the egg I mentioned previously. Blake does not mention 'Christ' much in his work - this is because everything he describes is a single encoded message about the nature of the Son of God. To Blake (and, in my view, in truth) The Son of God is both Adam and Satan - The Son of God is Mankind in its current embryonic state (hence the egg, this is further clarified by illustrations from 'The Gates of Paradise', one labelled 'What is Man?' depicts a pupae that is also a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, another a winged infant emerging from an egg)
So the cross in 'Sconfitta' represents the Four Zoas and the Sun is their Son.
The man worshipping the Sun has long white hair and robes, recalling the depiction of Urizen familiar from Blake's perhaps most famous painting, 'The Ancient of Days' - he is in the correct position according to the fourfold diagram I mentioned previously, which also backs up this assertion.
Yet Urizen is outside of and distinct from that which he kneels before.
The fish symbol of the early christian movement is a section from the Vesica Piscis, the section where the two circles interlock, the section representing The Son of God. While the later formalised Christianity took the cross as their exoteric symbol, the symbol is 'The Tripod of Life', not two interlocking circles (like the vesica piscis) or four (as Blake depicts in his fourfold diagram of the Four Zoas and their relationship to Adam and Satan) but three - Urizen is not included in this Trinity.
BELOW: The top left figure is 'The Tripod of Life', a common symbol for The Trinity in Catholicism, along with two alternative common geometrical representations of 'The Trinity'. In this illustration I am cheekily suggesting that these geometric figures for the Trinity are the meaning of the infamous 'Number of the Beast' mentioned in Revelations -
It is interesting to note here that Tolkien's Ailundale describes four principle 'Angels', though 'Melkor' (equivalent to the archetype of Urizen in Blake's cosmology) is excluded from this quaternity when he seeks to impose his own order on creation, though this starts with good intentions his works are the source of all conflict in the middle Earth legandarium). Only the names are changed - this direct equaivalence between Tolkien and Blake's cosmology is further clarified by the cover illustration of 'The Silmarillion', by Tolkien himself - it is the central section of Blake's diagrammatic representation of The Four Zoas -
Blake says 'God only acts and is in existing beings of men' - God is Mankind, is Adam is Satan is Urizen - there is only ONE.
I would disagree with Alexandria that Blake's vision is fundamentally negative - anyone who looks with open eyes upon this epoch can see the suffering and also its beauty and majesty, and this is reflected in Blake's work. But his message is ultimateley positive, that the suffering is for a purpose and of a finite duration, that 'now is the return of Adam to paradise':
"The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell. For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life; and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and holy, whereas it now appears finite and corrupt. This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment. But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged; this I shall do by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid. If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern." Blake, 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'
Josh
jester.me.uk
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