WITHERLINS | Scottish Witchcraft & Folklore

(The following excerpt comes from,Verse and Prose by William Blake, Author: William Blake

Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Date of Composition: 1861

Type of Manuscript: Manuscript notebook )

Beneath these is the seat of the harlot named Mystery in the Revelations;

she is siezed by two beings, each with three heads; they represent vegetative existence; as it is written in Reve- lations, they strip her naked and burn her with fire;
it represents the eternal consumption of vegetable life and death with its lusts; the wreathed torches in their hands represents eternal fire which is the fire of generation or vegetation; it is an eternal consummation. Those who are blessed with imaginative vision see this eternal female and tremble at what others fear not, while they despise and laugh at what others fear. Beneath her feet is a flaming cavern in which are seen her kings and councillors and warriors descend in flames, lamenting and looking upon her in astonishment and terror, and hell is opened beneath her seat. On the left hand the great Red Dragon with seven heads and ten horns; he has a salary-book of accusations lying on the rock open before him; he is bound in chains by two strong demons; they are Gog and Magog, who have been compelled to subdue their master (Ezekiel XXXVIII C. 8V.) with their hammer and tongs about to new-create the seven-headed kingdoms. The graves beneath are opened and the dead awake and obey the call of the trumpet; those on the right hand awake in joy, those on the left in horror.

Beneath the Dragon's cavern a skeleton begins to ani-
mate, starting into life at the trumpet's sound, while the wicked contend with each on the brink of perdition. On the right, a youthful couple are awaked by their children; an aged patriarch is awaked by his aged wife; he is Albion, our ancestor, patriarch of the Atlantic Continent, whose history preceded that of the Hebrews, and in whose sleep or chaos creation began; the good woman is Brittannica, the wife of Albion; Jerusalem is their daughter. Little infants creep out of the flowery mould into the green fields of the blessed, who in various joyful companies embrace and ascend to meet eternity.

Salome, as painted by Bavarian painter Franz von Stuck in 1906 when she was very much in vogue because of Mahler's opera the previous year. Von Stuck's paintings would later be admired by Hitler.