While Lexie was at her mothers I read "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" by Willam Blake. It put me so much in mind of my Sunday School class that I was tempted to bring it to them for a couple weeks of discussion.
Blake was all of thirty-three when he wrote "Marriage." The commentary (Bloom) I read speculated that it stemmed from his disdain for the writings of Emmanuel Swedenborg. Swedenborg claimed to have apocalyptic visions beginning in 1757, and turned from a career of scientific research to one of religious writing. Blake at first had some reserved affinity for Swedenborg, but his Divine Providence in 1790 did not agree with Blake at all. Blake took the facts that Swedenborg's visions started in the year of his own birth and the fact that he was now the Jesus-like age of 33 to sarcastically set himself up as a Messiah who would deliver the "Bible of Hell."
According to the devil, there was indeed a fall. In the beginning was the energy of Poetic Genius. But some began to codify Divine Ideas and bind inspiration with Reason. These fell from the flaming energies and built a cold, passive, unchanging Heaven. He posits this in an earthbound context on plate 11:
The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could percieve.Reason is forever bound to itself. It can only cannibalize itself and regurgitate what is already known.
And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country. placing it under its mental deity.
Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of & enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began Priesthood.
Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales.
And at length they pronounced that the Gods had orderd such things.
Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.
...in it were a number of monkeys, baboons, & all of that species chaind 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 & then devourd, by plucking off first one limb and another till the body was left a helpless trunk. this after grinning & kissing it with seeming fondness they devourd too; and here & there I saw one savourily picking the flesh off of his own tail...The Rush fans out there might be put in mind of "2112" (or the literate types of Ayn Rand) by some of the Proverbs of Hell. Probably the best examples being "Expect poison from standing water." and "The eagle never lost so much time. as when he submitted to learn of the crow."