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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.

      A Memorable Fancy

      The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert. that God spake to them; and whether they did not think at the time, that they would be misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition.

      Isaiah answer’d. I saw no God. nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover’d the infinite in every thing, and as I was then perswaded. & remain confirm’d; that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences but wrote.

      Then I asked: does a firm perswasion that a thing is so, make it so?

      He replied. All poets believe that it does, & in ages of imagination

      this firm perswasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of a firm perswasion of any thing.

      Then Ezekiel said. The philosophy of the east taught the first principles of human perception some nations held one

      principle for the origin & some another, we of Israel taught that the Poetic Genius (as you now call it) was the first principle and all the others merely derivative, which was the cause of our despising the Priests & Philosophers of other countries, and propheying that all Gods

      would at last be

      proved. to originate in ours & to be the tributaries of the Poetic Genius, it was this. that our great poet King David desired so fervently & invokes so patheticly, saying by this he conquers enemies & governs kingdoms; and we so loved our God.

      that we cursed in his name all the deities of surrounding nations, and asserted that they had rebelled; from these opinions the vulgar came to think that all nations would at last be subject to the jews.

      This said he, like all firm perswasions, is come to pass, for all nations believe the jews code and worship the jews god, and what greater subjection can be

      I heard this with some wonder, & must confess my own conviction. After dinner I ask’d Isaiah to favour the world with his lost works, he said none of equal value was lost. Ezekiel said the same of his.

      I also asked Isaiah what made him go naked and barefoot three years? he answerd, the same that made our friend Diogenes the Grecian.

      I then asked Ezekiel. why he eat dung, & lay so long on his right & left side? he answerd. the desire of raising other men into a perception of the infinite this the North American tribes practise. & is he honest who resists his genius or conscience.

      only for the sake of present ease or gratification?

      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 the tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite. and holy whereas it now appears finite & corrupt.

      This will come to pass by a 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 every thing 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.

      A Memorable Fancy

      I was in a Printing house in Hell & saw the method in which knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation.

      In the first chamber was a Dragon-Man, clearing away the rubbish from a caves mouth; within, a number of Dragons were hollowing the cave,

      In the second chamber was a Viper folding round the rock & the cave, and others adorning it with gold silver and precious stones.

      In the third chamber was an Eagle with wings and feathers of air, he caused the inside of the cave to be infinite, around were numbers of Eagle like men, who built palaces in the immense cliffs.

      In the fourth chamber were Lions of flaming fire raging around & melting the metals into living fluids.

      In the fifth chamber were Unnam’d forms, which cast the metals into the expanse.

      There they were reciev’d by Men who occupied the sixth chamber, and took the forms of books & were arranged in libraries.

      The Giants who formed this world into its sensual existence and now seem to live in it in chains; are in truth. the causes of its life & the sources of all activity, but the chains are, the cunning of weak and tame minds. which have power to resist energy. according to the proverb, the weak in courage is strong in cunning.

      Thus one portion of being, is the Prolific. the other, the Devouring: to the devourer it seems as if the producer was in his chains, but it is not so, he only takes portions of existence and fancies that the whole.

      But the Prolific would cease to be Prolific unless the Devourer as a sea recieved the excess of his delights.

      Some will say, Is not God alone the Prolific? I answer, God only Acts & Is, in existing beings or Men.

      These two classes of men are always upon earth, & they should be enemies; whoever tries

      to reconcile them seeks to destroy existence.

      Religion is an endeavour to reconcile the two.

      Note. Jesus Christ did not wish to unite but to seperate them, as in the Parable of sheep and goats! & he says I came not to send Peace but a Sword.

      Messiah or Satan or Tempter was formerly thought to be one of the Antediluvians who are our Energies.

      A Memorable Fancy

      An Angel came to me and said. O pitiable foolish young man!

      O horrible! O dreadful state! consider the hot burning dungeon thou art preparing for thyself to all eternity, to which thou art going in such career.

      I said. perhaps you will be willing to shew me my eternal lot & we will contemplate together upon it and see whether your lot or mine is most desirable

      So he took me thro’ a stable & thro’ a church & down into the church vault at the end of which was a mill: thro’ the mill we went, and came to a cave. down the winding cavern we groped our tedious way till a void boundless as a nether sky appeard beneath us & we held by the roots of trees and hung over this immensity; but I said, if you please we will commit ourselves to this void and see whether providence is here also, if you will not I will? but he answerd. do not presume O young-man but as we here remain behold thy lot which will soon appear when the darkness passes away

      So I remaind with him sitting in the twisted root of

      an oak. he was suspended in a fungus which hung with the head downward into the deep:

      By degrees we beheld the infinite Abyss, fiery as the smoke of a burning city; beneath us at an immense distance was the sun, black but shining round it were fiery tracks on which revolv’d vast spiders, crawling after their prey; which flew or rather swum in the infinite deep, in the most terrific shapes of animals sprung from corruption. & the air was full of them, & seemd composed of them; these are Devils. and are called Powers of the air, I now asked my companion which was my eternal lot? he said, between the black & white spiders

      But

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