The Book of Ahania
Title page from the Book of Ahania'
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| Author | William Blake |
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| Country | England |
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Publication date
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1795 |
| Preceded by | The Book of Los |
The Book of Ahania is one of the English poet William Blake's prophetic books. It was published in 1795, illustrated by Blake's own plates.
The poem of the book consists of six chapters. The content concerns Fuzon, a son of Urizen, a Zoa or major aspect in Blake's mythology. Ahania of the title is Urizen's female counterpart.
During autumn 1790, Blake moved to Lambeth, Surrey. He had a studio at the new house that he used while writing his what were later called his "Lambeth Books", which included The Book of Ahania in 1795. Like the others under the title, all aspects of the work, including the composition of the designs, the printing of them, the colouring of them, and the selling of them, happened at his home.The Book of Ahania was one of the few works that Blake describes as "illuminated printing", one of his colour printed works with the coloured ink being placed on the copperplate before printed.
Both The Book of Los and The Book of Ahania were the same size, produced at the same time, and were probably etched on opposing sides of the same copper-plates. Both works were the one ones by Blake to have intaglio etchings instead of relief etchings. Likewise, both works were colour-printed, where the various coloured inks were directly applied to the etching instead of added in later.
Although separate copies of individual plates exist, only one complete version of the Ahania exists, which is in the collection of the Library of Congress.
The story begins with Fuzon rebelling against Urizen, his father:
After the verbal attack, Fuzon attacks Urizen with fire and declares himself God. This leads to the creation of the tree of mystery by Urizen by accident followed by the nailing of Fuzon's body to it:
The poem continues with Ahania lamenting her disconnection from Urizen:
The Book of Ahania, along with The Book of Los, serves as an experimental revision of The Book of Urizen, and the poem takes its name from the Emanation of Urizen that he discarded. The end of The Book of Urizen describes the end of the African civilization, which is the third of seven cycles and describes the Garden of Eden story. The book closes with Orc being cursed as the serpent, and The Book of Ahania discusses the next cycle happening within Asia. The work parallels Exodus, and it describes how the Orc figure and the Urizen figure struggle for dominance over the Israelites. The Orc figure is connected to the pillar of fire that is seen at night and Urizen is the pillar of cloud during the day that, in Blake, confuses them. However, Urizen is able to finally defeat Orc when the Israelites accept the ten commandments. This leads to a death of the Israeli culture symbolised by the serpent on Moses's pole, which is also symbol of Orc's death. This is finalised with the Israelites returning from their revolution against Egypt to a state that is exactly like that under Egypt.
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