Poetry: The Nature of Heaven and Earth

Many of the geniuses throughout history understood that earth is hollow and literally contains the entire universe as we know it.  They knew this information would never become overtly available to the public so they encoded it into their poetry and artwork.

“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”  – Albert Camus

“The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth.” – Jean de la Bruyère

William Blake

The Youthful Poet’s Dream (1820) by William Blake

William Blake (1757-1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker known for his romantic poetry that merged myth, religion and the human condition.  Influenced by

Satan Watching the Endearments of Adam and Eve, W. Blake, Paradise Lost.

spiritual visions and a rejection of materialism, his poetry is filled with mysticism, symbolism, and alternative perspectives on reality that challenge conventional views of the physical world.

In works like The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Jerusalem, he explores the nature of reality and the cosmos, suggesting that human understanding is limited and that true knowledge transcends the physical senses. But it’s really his poem ‘Milton’ that stood out to me which tells the story of the poet John Milton’s spirit returning to Earth to correct errors in his previous work, Paradise Lost.

“But Miltons Human Shadow continu’d journeying above The rocky masses of The Mundane Shell; in the Lands Of Edom & Aram & Moab & Midian & Amalek.
The Mundane Shell, is a vast Concave Earth: an immense Hardend shadow of all things upon our Vegetated Earth Enlarg’d into dimension & deform’d into indefinite space, In Twenty-seven Heavens and all their Hells; with Chaos And Ancient Night; & Purgatory. It is a cavernous Earth.”

William Blake ‘Milton’ (1804)

“In which is Eternity. It expands in Stars to the Mundane Shell
And there it meets Eternity again, both within and without,
And the abstract Voids between the Stars are the Satanic Wheels.
There is the Gave; the Rock; the Tree; the Lake of Udan Adan;
The Forest, and the Marsh, and the Pits of bitumen deadly:
The Rocks of solid fire: the Ice valleys: the Plains Of burning sand: the rivers, cataract & Lakes of Fire:
The Islands of the fiery Lakes: the Trees of Malice: Revenge:
And black Anxiety; and the Cities of the Salamandrine men:
(But whatever is visible to the Generated Man,
Is a Greation of mercy & love, from the Satanic Void.)
The land of darkness flamed but no light, & no repose:
The land of snows of trembling, & of iron hail incessant:
The land of earthquakes: and the land of woven labyrinths:
The land of snares & traps & wheels & pit-falls & dire mills:
The Voids, the Solids, & the land of clouds & regions of waters:
With their inhabitants: in the Twenty-seven Heavens beneath Beulah:
Self-righteousnesses conglomerating against the Divine Vision:
A Concave Earth wondrous, Chasmal, Abyssal, Incoherent!
Forming the Mundane Shell: above; beneath: on all sides surrounding
Golgonooza: Los walks round the walls night and day.”

Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion by William Blake (1804) Dante Alighieri: The Divine Comedy
Paradiso 28

The prophetic books of William Blake : Milton
https://archive.org/details/propheticbooksof00blak/page/6/mode/2up

William Blake, the Romantic Revolution, and Liberty
https://oll.libertyfund.org/publications/reading-room/2022-11-08-william-blake-the-romantic-revolution-and-liberty

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake

Dante

Dante Alighieri (1265 – 1321 A.D.) was a renowned Italian poet, writer, and philosopher that is best known for his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, an epic poem that takes the reader on a journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. This work is considered one of the greatest literary works of all time. In it he paints a picture of nested concentric ‘heavenly spheres’ that house the planetary bodies. He explores both God and Earth as the center point of the universe.

quoting from the article: https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/paradiso/paradiso-28/

” In “reality”, as Dante will attempt to explain, the two universes are one. It is the attempt to explain this paradox, rather than simply affirm it, that makes Paradiso 28 one of the great intellective canti of the Paradiso.

The vision that Dante presents in Paradiso 28, where the pilgrim views God as the infinitely bright and infinitely tiny point at the center, and the various angelic intelligences as revolving circles that grow larger and slower as they grow more distant from the point, creates a visual paradox with respect to the notion of the universe we have held thus far.

By forcing us to complement the circumference model of the universe with a centrist one, Dante is trying to make us come to grips with the paradox of a point that is “enclosed by that which It encloses”: “inchiuso da quel ch’elli ’nchiude” (Par. 30.12).

This point is both center and circumference, both the deep (Augustinian) within and the great (Aristotelian) without. It is the Enclosed that Encloses/the Enclosing that is Enclosed.

This paradox is what the presentation of a second model of the universe is all about: somehow, if we can hold both New Universe and Old Universe together in our minds, we will be able to have some sense of the “unmoved mover”, of the point “that is enclosed by that which It encloses”.

“The Primum Mobile, which is the container and actualizer of all being, is itself contained by the “ciel de la divina pace”: the heaven of divine peace, the Empyrean.”

https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/paradiso/paradiso-28/

https://www.litcharts.com/lit/paradiso/canto-28

https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Italian/DantPar22to28.php#anchor_Toc64099985

Paradiso Canto XXVII:97-148 The Primum Mobile: Time: Degeneracy

“And the power which that look gifted me with, plucked me out of Leda’s fair nest, of the Twins, and thrust me into the swiftest Heaven. Its regions, highest and most alive, are so alike, that I cannot say in which one Beatrice chose to place me. But She, who saw my longing, began to speak, smiling, so delightedly that God seemed shining in her face: ‘The nature of the universe which keeps the centre fixed and moves the rest around it, begins here, as if from its goal.”

Paradiso Canto XXVIII:1-57 The Angelic Circles

“When the truth had been revealed, by her who emparadises my mind, a truth in opposition to the present life of miserable humanity, my memory recalls that, gazing on the lovely eyes, from which Love made the noose to capture me, I saw, as a candle flame lit behind a man, is seen by him in a mirror, before it is, itself, in his vision or thought, so that he turns round, to see if the glass spoke true, and sees them agreeing, as song-words to their metre: and when I turned, and my own eyes were struck by what appears in that space, whenever the eyes are correctly fixed on its orbiting, I saw a point that beamed out a light so intense, that the eye it blazes on, must be closed to its fierce brightness, and whatever star seems smallest from down here, would be a moon if it were placed alongside it, as star is placed alongside star.

Perhaps as near as a halo appears to be to the light that generates it, when the vapour in which it glows is thickest, at such a distance as that, round that point, a circle of fire revolved so quickly, it exceeded the speed of the fastest sphere, that surrounds the universe, and this circle was surrounded by another, that by a third, the third by a fourth, the fourth a fifth, the fifth a sixth.

After it the seventh followed, already so broad in its reach that if Juno’s rainbow messenger were complete it would be too small to contain it. And so the eighth and ninth, and each one moved more slowly as its number was further from unity: and the one from which the pure light source was least distant, had the clearest flame, because, I believe, it is more embedded in the light’s truth.

My Lady, who saw me labouring in profound anticipation, said; ‘Heaven and all Nature hangs from that point. Look at the circle which is most nearly joined to it, and learn that its movement is so fast because of the burning love which it is pierced by.’ And I to her: ‘If the universe was ordered in the sequence I see in these circlings, then I would be content with what I see in front of me. But, in the universe of the senses, we see the spheres as more divine the further they are distant from Earth, the centre. So, if my desire is to find its goal in this marvellous, angelic Temple, that only has love and light as its limits, I must hear why the copy and the pattern are not identical in form, since, myself, I cannot see it.’”

https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Italian/DantPar22to28.php#anchor_Toc64099985

Dante travels through the centre of the Earth in the Inferno, and comments on the resulting change in the direction of gravity in Canto XXXIV (lines 76–120)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Comedy

“After drawing strength from Beatrice’s lovely gaze, Dante sees reflected in her eyes a small, single point of light with fire whirling around it. Dante counts a total of nine rings circling around the single point, each turning more slowly than the one before it. Dante is confused by this sight—to his senses, it seems that the Primum Mobile moves slowest, the outermost spheres the fastest—so Beatrice enlightens him. She explains that the size of each sphere corresponds to the diffusion of God’s power within it. So although the Primum Mobile looks like a small, slow circle from this perspective, it is actually the sphere which “most loves and knows” and speeds accordingly.

Beatrice then identifies the various angelic powers that inhabit the spheres, beginning with the Cherubim, Seraphim, and Thrones. Each of these powers, she explains, has different levels of knowledge of God (depth of sight). The next triad includes powers known as Dominations, Virtues, and Powers, and the final triad contains Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. All these powers are constantly drawn up to God, drawing all of creation up with them.” https://www.litcharts.com/lit/paradiso/canto-28

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321
https://archive.org/details/divinecomedy1901dant/page/362/mode/2up

Edgar Allen Poe

(coming soon)