ENERGY AND ARCHETYPE

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Book of Urizen

Plate 8, Copy G

This study of Blake's The Four Zoas is available on the internet. If you are interested in the relationship between the thought of William Blake and that of Carl Jung you may find it enlightening.

ENERGY AND ARCHETYPE: A JUNGIAN ANALYSIS OF
THE FOUR ZOAS BY WILLIAM BLAKE

August, 1974

By Lee T. Hamilton 

"The purpose of this study is to examine the parallels between the tenets of Carl Jung's psychology and the mythopoeic structure of Blake's poem, The Four Zoas." 

From the second section of the thesis which is a detailed analysis of the poem, read quotes from the study hightlighted in blue. 

Night One of The Four Zoas

reason to emotion

Page 39

The song tells how Luvah, the Feeling function, and his anima, Vala,
sought to depose Urizen in his role as the Thinking function. Luvah, like Phaethon, stole the horses of Intellect and drove Urizen's chariot across the vault of consciousness.

"The Fallen Man takes his repose, Urizen sleeps in the porch,
"Luvah and Vala wake & fly up from the Human Heart
"Into the Brain from thence; upon the pillow Vala slumbered,

Page 40 

"And Luvah siez'd the Horses of Light & rose
into the Chariot of Day. (Keynes, p. 271

 ...

The original fall was a fall from undifferentiated psychic content into differentiation, or from unconsciousness into consciousness.

reason declares himself God

Page 41

Urizen descends and declares himself "God from Eternity to Eternity" (Keynes, p. 273).  

This is the "hybris of consciousness" which Jung said is the chief failure of
modern man and against which Blake constantly inveighed. It is the hybris of consciousness to pretend that everything derives from its primacy,
despite the fact that consciousness itself demonstrably comes from an older unconscious psyche. (Jung, X, 443)

intuition joins with reason 

Page 43

The Divine Providence which oversees all of the events of the poem appears above the feast as "One Man," a symbol of unity and integration. The One Man is later identified as Jesus.

... 

 At the feast, Los and Enitharmon eat "the fleshly bread" and drink "the nervous wine" (Keynes, p. 274). These eucharistic elements symbolize communion with the temporal world, the world of Urizen. Any communion with the temporal world is an act of union with the world of Urizen. Any communion is an act of integration with God (June, IX, pt. 2, 144). Therefore, by partaking of the elements of the communion, Los and Enitharmon are symbolically integrated with Urizen and his fallen world;
this is a loss of Vision.

intuition takes lead

Page 44

The scene now shifts to Eden where the Council of God
meets,
"As one Man,
& that One Man
They call Jesus the Christ, & they in him & he in them
Live in Perfect harmony, in Eden the land of life."
(Keynes, p. 277)

This is the self, the suprapersonal entity that oversees and guides psychic life. It is a God-image and cannot be distinguished from the role of the self. Here is the "Hand Divine" that guides the events of the poem, the process of psychic integration that orders and unifies the disparate
elements of psychic life. 

 Page 44

The messengers from Beulah enter and report Albion's
fall from Beulah. Their version of the second fall emphasizes
a conspiracy between Urizen and Luvah as the cause of the
fall from Beulah. The debate between Urizen and Luvah seems
to foreshadow subsequent events. This debate reveals the
two rational functions arguing with one another over the
question of who will be the dominant one.

 Page 45

The second night begins as Albion loses his Divine Vision and abdicates power to the Thinking function, Urizen. 

Albion abdicates to Urizen

Page 46 

The Divine Vision is the unity of all things, the perception of the unity of multeity. By turning his eyes "outward to Self" (Keynes, p. 280), Albion loses the Divine Vision. Blake's "Self" should not be confused with Jung's self. Blake means that Albion turns away from the internal unity of the Vision by directing his newly differentiated powers of consciousness
to the outer world of materiality. Here Blake means selfhood or ego-consciousness by the term "Self." By turning vision "outward," the separation of the subjective from the objective, of Self from non-Self, is achieved. Albion substitutes the rule of Reason or Intellect for the unifying
and controlling influence of the Jungian self which normally oversees the psyche. 

He gives the scepter of power to Urizen, who rises from the marriage feast of Los and Enitharmon and exults in his new power, but his exultation is short-lived. He is sobered by the vision of the "Abyss," which is the unconscious.

To be continued in the next post.