books. It is the rock of separation, the division of man
from man, on which Albion took his seat (" Jerusalem," p. 28,
1. 12), which Blake attributed to the divorce of reason and
morality from imagination and forgiveness, or love — that is, the
rupture of what he now called the marriage of Heaven and
Hell, and later on simply tho division of the masculine from
the feminine. This is the rock of the North, and is the seat
of Satan. The rock of the South is the power of Divine
Forgiveness and the permanence of imaginative form and of
the " true surfaces " of things which appear when the apparent
(phenomenal) surfaces are corroded away. It is the Throne of
God, beyond which Reason would exalt law by making Mystery
the sanction of Morality. (" Jerusalem," p. 78, 1. 18). The
fine senses are called an abyss here, a flood elsewhere.
The devil's first question hints that a bird has two appear-
ances. One is its true form and includes the shape of its mind
and emotions. The other is its apparent form of feathers
" closed" by our fitfe senses. This "closing" is what "creates"
the outer form by making it seem solid. It is Satan's " world
of opaqueness ,; (called Luvah's when Luvah was Satan.
"Jerusalem," p. 73, 1. 22), and its creation is the paradoxical
act of cruelty and mercy produced by shrinkage of mind, not
by miraculous solidification of vacuum into matter.
The Proverbs op Hell.
The first proverb is divided into three parts which correspond to the triad Head, Heart, Loins. But they are placed in reverse order — Loins, Heart, Head — the exterior being the first. The proverb would read, if written in terms of the true Regions : — " Learn from the Loins ; teach from the Heart ; enjoy from the Head."
Passing by such of these proverbs as are figurative only in an obvious sense, with little reference to the peculiar use of words symbolically which was Blake's second language, we come to the seventh and twelfth which compare wisdom
