Jacob's ladder

In Jacob's dream there was a ladder right up to the gates of heaven (to continue a theme from an earlier post). In WB’s watercoloured relief etching, angels are ascending and descending a ladder which curls off the great orange circle like a peel. It also builds upwards out of Jacob's body, fleshy under the angel's feet.

In Joe Coppard’s sketch below the ladder is curled into the name of God and inscribed into a figure (which is also a female version of Urizen in chains). God is trapped by what He gives life to; in making life we make God; God is obscene. It reminds me of poet Muhammad Iqbal’s lines, addressed to Him: ‘But whose loss was the fall of Adam, that creature of earth / Was it Yours or mine?’


More of Joe’s excellent Jacob’s Ladder sketches on Flickr.

CK