ABSTRACT
In the Marriage the debate between the Platonizing Thel and the alchemical matron Clay is settled in favor of the teaching of the Smaragdine Table. The title page of the Marriage shows many pairs of spirits in loving embrace, and the female comes from hell’s flames, to meet the male, from what appears to be a bank of clouds. Blake seems to have known other versions of the same symbol. Indeed, he seems to have had a more than superficial acquaintance with the thought of the alchemists. Taylor in his Dissertation explains the nature of the Titans: they are the forces of the irrational – again, akin to the energy, desire, and delight that Blake had learned from Boehme to regard as the source of all life: “the Titans are the ultimate artificers of things, and the most proximate to their fabrication.
