ABSTRACT
The tree of Mystery, which plays so great a part in the Prophetic Books, first makes its appearance in two poems in Songs of Experience: The Human Abstract and A Poison Tree. Blake's Vala herself, therefore, is sometimes represented as a tree, she being the Great Mystery, from whom all creatures are generated. The inverted tree immediately brings to mind the cabalistic Tree of God, which is emblematically so represented, for the root is in God's highest and most hidden essence, and the twigs and branches in nature. Adam, instead of feeding upon the bread of heaven, the "fruits of Life", ate the earthly nature of the tree, in which was the hidden wrath of God the Father. The tree makes its final exit in the regeneration of man, in the last pages of Jerusalem.
