Public-domain ebook
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Language: en6,708 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Poetry·British Literature·Philosophy & Ethics
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #45315.
About this book
The work is a sprawling visionary essay that treats heaven and hell as complementary forces rather than fixed realms. It opens with a proclamation that a new heaven has been thirty‑three years old while an “Eternal Hell revives,” and immediately launches into a series of paradoxes, good versus evil, reason versus energy, arguing that these contraries generate the human experience. The author then proceeds to dismantle traditional doctrines about body, soul, and divine punishment, replacing them with a system in which the body is a facet of the soul, energy is the source of delight, and reason merely bounds that energy. Throughout the opening, the text interweaves biblical references, mythic figures such as Swedenborg, Isaiah, and Milton, and a litany of “proverbs of Hell” that illustrate a worldview in which desire, fire, and chaos are elevated to the status of sacred insight.
The voice is unapologetically polemical, blending prophetic sermon, philosophical tract, and poetic fantasia in a style that reflects the late‑Romantic, early‑Victorian fascination with mysticism and the occult. Its dense, often elliptical prose, rich with biblical allusion and invented proverbs, will appeal to readers who enjoy the visionary intensity of William Blake’s own poetry, the speculative theology of Emanuel Swedenborg, and the mythic daring of poets like Blake and Shelley. Those drawn to challenging, metaphysical explorations of good, evil, and the nature of perception will find this text a rewarding, if demanding, encounter.
Who appears in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
- SwedenborgElderly man with white beard, long hair, in flowing clerical robes, holding folded linen scrolls
- AdamRobust, youthful man with long hair and beard, simple linen drapery, serene expression
- IsaiahAged prophet with long beard, solemn eyes, wearing a mantle and turban, holding a staff
The opening · free to read
But the following contraries to these are true:--
1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul. For that called Body is a portion of Soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.
2. Energy is the only life, and is from the Body; and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
3. Energy is Eternal Delight.
Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place and governs the unwilling.
And being restrained, it by degrees becomes passive, till it is only the shadow of desire.
The history of this is written in Paradise Lost, and the Governor or Reason is called Messiah.
And the original Archangel or possessor of the command of the heavenly host is called the Devil, or Satan, and his children are called Sin and Death.
But in the book of Job, Milton's Messiah is called Satan.
For this history has been adopted by both parties.
It indeed appeared to Reason as if desire was cast out, but the Devil's account is, that the Messiah fell, and formed a heaven of what he stole from the abyss.
This is shown in the Gospel, where he prays to the Father to send the Comforter or desire that Reason may have ideas to build on, the Jehovah of the Bible being no other than he who dwells in flaming fire. Know that after Christ's death he became Jehovah.
But in Milton, the Father is Destiny, the Son a ratio of the five senses, and the Holy Ghost vacuum!
_Note._--The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet, and of the Devil's party without knowing it.
A Memorable Fancy
As I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius, which to Angels look like torment and insanity, I collected some of their proverbs, thinking that as the sayings used in a nation mark its character, so the proverbs of Hell show the nature of infernal wisdom better than any description of buildings or garments.
When I came home, on the abyss of the five senses, where a flat-sided steep frowns over the present world, I saw a mighty Devil folded in black clouds hovering on the sides of the rock; with corroding fires he wrote the following sentence now perceived by the minds of men, and read by them on earth:--
"How do you know but every bird that cuts the airy way Is an immense world of delight, closed by your senses five?"
The book keeps going
Keep reading, and see it illustrated
Reading is free forever. Sign up and watch scenes appear while you read.
Scenes Storieta drew for other classics.
