Blake's 'Ancient of Days': The Symbolism of the Compasses

Abstract

No one who has turned the pages of Blake's Prophetic Books, as they were originally printed and illuminated by his special method, will easily forget the frontispiece to the poem Europe, a Prophecy (P1. 9a). It represents an old bearded figure kneeling on one knee, stretching down his left hand, and resting a pair of huge compasses on a sphere, of which a part is just visible as a scratch in some versions of the original. It is one of Blake's most impressive inventions, and one of which we know that he himself was particularly fond, for he coloured a copy of it for Tatham on his death-bed.1 We are told that Blake was originally inspired to carry out this design by a vision which hovered over his head at the top of the staircase when he was living in Lambeth.2 There is no reason to doubt that this was so, any more than in a hundred other cases in which Blake talked of his paintings and poems as the direct records of what the spirits showed him. But though the vision was no doubt spontaneous, it clothed itself-at least when it had been put down on paper-partly in traditional forms. For the imagination, even of the most mystically minded artist, is conditioned by what he has seen in the material world, and any new vision must of necessity take to some extent the shapes in which the artist has been accustomed to think.3 The subject of the design is usually (but, as will be seen later, not quite accurately) described as 'The Ancient of Days' and it illustrates essentially the phrase referring to the Creation from Proverbs VIII. 27 : "When he set a compass upon the face of the depth." This theme is one which occurs quite frequently in mediaeval cycles of illuminations representing the Creation, in which it stands for the second day (P1. 9b).4 The compasses mark the