Blake Tarot ~ I Magic

Buryn's keywords: will-power, ability to concentrate, control, channeling energy, duality, time

The forces of Nature seem to be in the hands of the magician in Blake's "Magic". The dog-headed Anubis beneath the star Sirius, opening up the heavens to return the Nile to flood. The magician alight with imagination moves beyond the potential of "Innocence" makes his will material.

Phil Coppens in his article states that the opening phrase of the Auguries of Innocence - “To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.” - is Blake's way of restating the Hermetic "As above, so below". Anubis is considered interchangeable with Hermes, both as psychopomps. Buryn states in the book that Sirius was called Sothis by the Egyptians and the Nile itself was often given the same name.

Los is Blake's psychopomp and the Zoa of Imagination. Duality, time, the four directions, above and below form the fallen material world and the angel who answers Los' call is Urizen, lending a further darkness to the actions of the Magician.

The main image for this card, 'The Fertilization of Egypt", is an engraving that Blake made from a drawing by one of Blake's greatest influences, Henry Fuseli for Erasmus Darwin's Part II of the 'Botanic Garden'. Fuseli is most famous for his Gothic Romantic painting "The Nightmare". Some may remember it made an appearance in the movie "Gothic" based on the night Mary and Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and Dr. John Polidori spent together which spawned Shelley's 'Frankenstein' and Polidori's 'Vampyre'. (see image below)

Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin, opened the door for the popularization of scientific theory with the poems of "The Botanic Garden" that would later influence his grandson and science fiction writers. His poems had an effect on Blake and his 'great architect' was likely the inspiration for Blake's Urizen (see IV Reason).

From 'The Botanic Garden' by Erasmus Darwin
IV. "Sailing in air, when dark MONSOON inshrouds
130 His tropic mountains in a night of clouds;
Or drawn by whirlwinds from the Line returns,
And showers o'er Afric all his thousand urns;
High o'er his head the beams of SIRIUS glow,
And, Dog of Nile, ANUBIS barks below.
135 NYMPHS! YOU from cliff to cliff attendant guide
In headlong cataracts the impetuous tide;
Or lead o'er wastes of Abyssinian sands
The bright expanse to EGYPT'S shower-less lands.
--Her long canals the sacred waters fill,
140 And edge with silver every peopled hill;
Gigantic SPHINX in circling waves admire;
And MEMNON bending o'er his broken lyre;
O'er furrow'd glebes and green savannas sweep,
And towns and temples laugh amid the deep.

(notes) Mr. Volney observes that the time of the rising of the Nile commences
about the 19th of June, and that Abyssinia and the adjacent parts of
Africa are deluged with rain in May, June, and July, and produce a mass
of water which is three months in draining off. The Abbe Le Pluche
observes that as Sirius, or the dog-star, rose at the time of the
commencement of the flood its rising was watched by the astronomers, and
notice given of the approach of inundation by hanging the figure of
Anubis, which was that of a man with a dog's head, upon all their
temples. Histoire de Ciel

Click to expand...

The border, interestingly enough, is from Blake's Book of Job.

I am either overtired (it's nearly 2 am) and my description above is too brief or I still feel this card has more to say.

I look at the clouds as they close in and water is forced into the sky and released again in the cycle of matter. The angel feels like an image of Satan and it becomes easy to see how, if simplified, this very card could hold the key to the extremes of judeo-christian fundamentalism, to the ascetic monks, the devil in our flesh, false gods... The clouds of matter obscuring our view to the heavens to which the prayer is sent. I think the message got lost when someone confused Nature for God (the Gnostic demiurge) with the Eternal - Nature being the expression of God.

This card's dual world feels more masculine, with the feminine only hinted at in Isis' rattle on the opposite shore from the pyramids. Anubis/Los spans the river, man's world and the Otherworld. His magic almost Druidic.

I see so much in this image and yet I struggle. I think I understand that Blake is trying to indicate that Imagination is man's true connection with Eternity, nothing else is real. It is merely conjured.

Perhaps I'll have another look at this in the morning...

I decided to take some time to think a little more about what I see in this card. The discussion going on about the definition and function of Tarot has me twisted up and it is forcing me to look at how I am approaching the study of the Blake beginning with this card in particular. Does all this discussion and 'archaeology' of sorts take away the mystery through some level of understanding?

As I begin to understand the Zoas and their function in Blakean mythology, it might better be compared to opening a door on a very large room with painted ceilings and books on every wall. Rather than looking for a light switch and guessing the nature of the card through sensual hints and cues, a room full of new mysteries is opened up.

Los has his back to us, the shaman/magician/psychopomp, by whose fallen existence we are looking at Eternal Death, turned away from Eternity. We, the observer, stand behind him in the north while he faces Urizen, Time, the Dog Star in the South. The rising of Sirius meant the coming of the summer heat, fire and it makes me think of Los' forge, for he is also a blacksmith.

There is something about this card that haunts my memory. As I lay down to sleep, more and more of it reveals itself to me and I only hope that by the morning I still remember...

It seems obvious, but, the one thing I seem to have overlooked in my comments on this card is the fact that Los/Anubis has one foot on each bank of the River. The East (Life) and the West (Death - the pyramids). He has access to both worlds while the river passes beneath him. The water, like us, is never the same from one moment to another. The moment arrives, achieves perfection, and decays. The creation and the undoing of his Magic.