ABSTRACT
Blake’s imaginative preoccupation with origins did not end with the descent of the soul. There are myths, both Neoplatonic and alchemical, which belong to what Sallust terms the theological order, and tell of the creation of the world of which man is but a part, and of a fall anterior to the fall of man. Common to the alchemical and Neoplatonic systems is a body of mythological and metaphysical writing on the descent of intellect, or light— which is, of course, anterior to the descent of the soul— into matter, or darkness. There is a more elaborate alchemical myth which Blake seems to have known— again, probably from Vaughan. There is no doubt that Blake saw the identity of the two fables of the mingling of man with a female water-nymph to produce a “double” and unnatural hermaphrodite.
