OPEN THE DOOR

 First posted Oct 2020

Wikipedia Commons
Book of Urizen
Copy G, Plate 26

 

When I asked Larry which of Blake's pictures he liked best he selected this one without an explanation. His response to the picture was not rational but emotional and intuitive. I can now give a rational explanation to his reaction to the image.

Larry saw through the image to those who stand outside of the closed door. The pleading child and the howling dog are on the outside without a way to get in. To Larry and to Blake this was the plight of humanity; the door is not closed because we are locked out of Eden but because we fail to open it. Built into the mind of man is his Divine Humanity but it is up to the conscious man to open the door or gate and invite the expression of his spirit into his expanded mind.

The poignancy of this image to me is that in adolescence when individuals are re-accessing the assumptions of their childhood, they may close the door to a perception of the internal vision of the Divine. Once the door is closed there has to be a decisive action to reopen it. If the mind of the individual has been turned over to the reasoning faculty exclusively, and the intuition and imagination have been stifled, there is little probability that the door to spiritual experience will be reopened. 

But all is not lost. Some become disillusioned with a one-sided dependence on reason through seeing its failure to provide a balanced way of living. Some are given an opening into a fuller life through a spontaneous awakening of the spirit. Some quietly find the lost piece from their childhood by continuing to seek for it in beauty, truth and love. As Pilgrim learned in Pilgrim's Progress we already possess the key, we needn't wait for someone to give it to us.

Milton Plate 2, (E 96)
"Come into my hand
By your mild power; descending down the Nerves of my right arm
From out the Portals of my Brain, where by your ministry

The Eternal Great Humanity Divine. planted his Paradise,
And in it caus'd the Spectres of the Dead to take sweet forms
In likeness of himself. Tell also of the False Tongue! vegetated
Beneath your land of shadows: of its sacrifices. and
Its offerings; even till Jesus, the image of the Invisible God
Became its prey; a curec, an offering, and an atonement,
For Death Eternal in the heavens of Albion, & before the Gates
Of Jerusalem his Emanation, in the heavens beneath Beulah" 

Milton, Plate 10 [11], (E 104)
"The nature of a Female Space is this: it shrinks the Organs
Of Life till they become Finite & Itself seems Infinite.   

And Satan vibrated in the immensity of the Space! Limited
To those without but Infinite to those within: it fell down and
Became Canaan: closing Los from Eternity in Albions Cliffs     
A mighty Fiend against the Divine Humanity mustring to War"

Milton, Plate 13 [14], (E 107)
"The Bard replied. I am Inspired! I know it is Truth! for I Sing
Plate 14 [15]
According to the inspiration of the Poetic Genius
Who is the eternal all-protecting Divine Humanity
To whom be Glory & Power & Dominion Evermore Amen"

Milton 30 [33], (E 129)
"But to
The Sons of Eden the moony habitations of Beulah,
Are from Great Eternity a mild & pleasant Rest.

And it is thus Created. Lo the Eternal Great Humanity            
To whom be Glory & Dominion Evermore Amen
Walks among all his awful Family seen in every face
As the breath of the Almighty. such are the words of man to man
In the great Wars of Eternity, in fury of Poetic Inspiration,
To build the Universe stupendous: Mental forms Creating"         

Jerusalem, Plate 19, (E 164)
"And Los was roofd in from Eternity in Albions Cliffs
Which stand upon the ends of Beulah, and withoutside, all
Appear'd a rocky form against the Divine Humanity.               

Albions Circumference was clos'd: his Center began darkning
Into the Night of Beulah, and the Moon of Beulah rose
Clouded with storms: Los his strong Guard walkd round beneath the Moon
And Albion fled inward among the currents of his rivers."  

Four Zoas, Night II, PAGE 36, (E 325) 
"To listen to the hungry ravens cry in wintry season
When the red blood is filld with wine & with the marrow of lambs

It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements
To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughter
     house moan
To see a god on every wind & a blessing on every blast           
To hear sounds of love in the thunder storm that destroys our enemies house
To rejoice in the blight that covers his field, & the sickness 
     that cuts off his children
While our olive & vine sing & laugh round our door & our children bring fruits & flowers

Then the groan & the dolor are quite forgotten & the slave grinding at the mill
And the captive in chains & the poor in the prison, & the soldier in the field
When the shatterd bone hath laid him groaning among the happier dead

It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity
Thus could I sing & thus rejoice, but it is not so with me!"

Urizen, Plate 24, (E 81)
"4. He in darkness clos'd, view'd all his race,
And his soul sicken'd! he curs'd
Both sons & daughters; for he saw
That no flesh nor spirit could keep                        
His iron laws one moment.

5. For he saw that life liv'd upon death
Plate 25
The Ox in the slaughter house moans
The Dog at the wintry door
And he wept, & he called it Pity
And his tears flowed down on the winds"

NELSON HILTON

 First posed August 2023

Title - Blake An Illustrated Quarterly - 1999

Article - www.english.uga.edu/wblake

by Nelson Hilton

"The 'Blake Digital Text Project' (http://www.english.uga.edu/wblake) originated in 1994 with the desire to create an electronic, online, interactive, enhanced version of the long out-of-print 1967 Concordance to the Writings of William Blake, edited by David V. Erdman."

[ An online Concordance to Blake is available now at:

http://victorian-studies.net/concordance/blake/         ]

When Nelson Hilton was Professor of English at the University of Georgia he worked at making Erdman's The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake accessible in digitized form. He indexed Blake's works and linked each item with the file containing the contents. Unlike Erdman's book he included line numbers for easy referencing. Page numbers from the book were on each line.

When Hilton left the University of Georgia, the Blake digitizing project migrated to the University of Arizona with which Hilton became associated. 

Each section of Erdman's book is easily located in this listing of the contents. It is convenient to click on any listing and read the selection that interests you. 

Contents, The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake

https://blake.lib.asu.edu/html/home.html

In Hilton's CONTENTS here is text from America:

America, Plate 3, (E 51)

Am1.1; E51    "The shadowy daughter of Urthona stood before red Orc.
Am1.2; E51    When fourteen suns had faintly journey'd o'er his dark abode;
Am1.3; E51    His food she brought in iron baskets, his drink in cups of iron;
Am1.4; E51    Crown'd with a helmet & dark hair the nameless female stood;
Am1.5; E51    A quiver with its burning stores, a bow like that of night,
Am1.6; E51    When pestilence is shot from heaven; no other arms she need:
Am1.7; E51    Invulnerable tho' naked, save where clouds roll round her loins,
Am1.8; E51    Their awful folds in the dark air; silent she stood as night;
Am1.9; E51    For never from her iron tongue could voice or sound arise;
Am1.10; E51  But dumb till that dread day when Orc assay'd his fierce                                    embrace.   

Am1.11; E51  Dark virgin; said the hairy youth, thy father stern abhorr'd;
Am1.12; E51  Rivets my tenfold chains while still on high my spirit soars;
Am1.13; E51  Sometimes an eagle screaming in the sky, sometimes a lion,
Am1.14; E51  Stalking upon the mountains, & sometimes a whale I lash
Am1.15; E51  The raging fathomless abyss, anon a serpent folding

Am1.16; E51  Around the pillars of Urthona, and round thy dark limbs,
Am1.17; E51  On the Canadian wilds I fold, feeble my spirit folds.
Am1.18; E51  For chaind beneath I rend these caverns; when thou bringest food
Am1.19; E51  I howl my joy! and my red eyes seek to behold thy face
Am1.20; E51  In vain! these clouds roll to & fro, & hide thee from my sight."

Wikipedia Commons

America

Plate 3

 

Los (Time) and Enitharmon (Space) children of Enion and Urthona (Nature and Spirit) become themselves the parents of Orc (the spirit of change or revolution.)  

So Blake announces that he will write about things happening in the natural word but clothed in symbols which will hide and reveal reality as befits his myth of  creation, fall, redemption and apocalypse.

We find the daughter of Urthona - a manifestation of Urthona in the Natural World - providing the food of dissension to Orc who is approaching maturity. She is armed with a supply of ideas and the means to direct them, but it takes the awakening of the revolutionary spirit to give them voice. Incidents that demand change repeatedly occur but a clear view of a way forward is not in sight.

Four Zoas, Night VII, Page 79, (E 355)

"Urizen answerd Read my books explore my Constellations 
Enquire of my Sons & they shall teach thee how to War
Enquire of my Daughters who accursd in the dark depths
Knead bread of Sorrow by my stern command for I am God
Of all this dreadful ruin   Rise O daughters at my Stern command

Rending the Rocks Eleth & Uveth rose & Ona rose       
Terrific with their iron vessels driving them across
In the dim air they took the book of iron & placd above
On clouds of death & sang their songs Kneading the bread of Orc
Orc listend to the song compelld hungring on the cold wind
That swaggd heavy with the accursed dough. the hoar frost ragd   
Thro Onas sieve   the torrent rain pourd from the iron pail
Of Eleth & the icy hands of Uveth kneaded the bread
The heavens bow with terror underneath their iron hands
Singing at their dire work the words of Urizens book of iron
While the enormous scrolls rolld dreadful in the heavens above   
And still the burden of their song in tears was poured forth
The bread is Kneaded let us rest O cruel father of children
But Urizen remitted not their labours upon his rock" 

 

Events of Fall

  Previously posted Nov 2018 

Yale Center for British Art
Jerusalem
Plate 19  

 

Always fiercely eclectic, Blake has gathered his symbols here from a number of sources into a new creation: sleeping man equals fallen man living in darkness; this most general symbol fills the New Testament. For example, "Awake thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee light". We live by the light of reason (not always Christ's light!). Urizen, the Sun God, must be asleep to allow Luvah, like the Greek adolescent, Phaethon, to seize his Horses of Light and rise into the Chariot of Day. Zeus struck Phaethon down with a thunderbolt in the story in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Blake used Ovid as a primary source for his borrowings from Greek mythology.

In Night ii we will find Urizen casting Luvah into the furnaces of affliction, where there is much heat but no light. What was once eternal delight has become unmitigated hell.

Luvah and Vala personify the masculine and feminine dimensions of feeling, and séparated from Luvah, Vala becomes the goddess of fallen nature. Luvah's seizure of the sun and Vala's dalliance on the pillow express in different ways the same event. The Prince of Love is bound to get his wings scorched, and the sleeping Albion is rather foolish to allow this to happen; he has lost his head over a part of himself.

Blake used this double event to say many things to us at many levels. Fundamentally Blake is saying that Man has lost his heavenly wholeness (which he calls the Divine Image) and begun to worship the material, a relatively insignificant part of himself. He turns his back upon the Divine Vision in his dream of Vala. The former is Eternal Life and the latter Eternal Death. The dalliance of Albion with Vala leads to the Eternal Death (fallenness) that we read about in the first six nights. Blake described it symbolically, in many ways, for example, "to converse in the wilds of Newton and Locke". We find here Blake's primary dialectic, between eternal vision and fallen materialism.

Other accounts of this decisive event occur at various places throughout the Four Zoas. The most definitive is that of Ahania. Her dream relates the central event, the primary fall, to an idolatrous worship; just so Blake evaluated organized religion. Albion's worship of his shadow has two immediate consequences: he breaks out with the boils of Job, a biblical symbol of the Fall of Mankind, and he exiles Luvah and Vala from their rightful place in the psychic economy.

__________________________

There are at least six occurrences of the story which I call the central event of the Fall:

K=Keynes, E=Erdman

Enitharmon's Song of Death      Night i. 261-80 K 271-2 --- (E 305)

Ambassadors from Beulah                     i. 484-559 K277-9 --- (E 311)

Ahania's vision                                       iii. 42-102 K 292-4 --- (E 326)

The Spectre of Urthona (first)              iv. 84-110 K 299-300 --- (E 334)

The Shadow of Enitharmon                 vii. 239-64 K 326 --- (E 358)

The Spectre of Urthona (second)        vii. 277-98 K 327 --- (E 359)

See Summary

Primer - Myth

British Museum
Illustration of the Prodigal Son.

Blake Archive
The Prodigal Son's return to his father.


Fitzwilliam Museum
The father's reception of his son.

Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Plate 45, (E 26)

"And God like a father rejoicing to see,

His children as pleasant and happy as he:

Would have no more quarrel with the Devil or the Barrel

But kiss him & give him both drink and apparel."

Myth -This passage is from Larry Clayton's book, Chapter Nine:

"Many people have called William Blake unique among English poets as the creator of a complete mythology. In a standard dictionary "without foundation in fact"  appears as the fifth meaning of 'mythical', but this is probably what the term conveys in common parlance. Therefore we must begin our study of Blake's myth by raising our consciousness of the word. 'Logos', 'myth', 'epic'--these three words have a common root. In literary and theological language myths are statements about the non-material ultimate . Some people of course avoid the non-material, considering it to be without foundation in fact; it's doubtful that any such reader has endured to his point of our study.

Blake considered the non-material to be the real; his art centered around the  endeavour to express the reality of the non-material. The meaning of his entire  artistic enterprise we may call his myth. His object was to fit all of experience into a total framework of meaning that will inform life. Our object is to grasp that total  framework; once we do that, we have a myth of meaning.

The diagram below schematically represents the shape of Blake's myth. All his  poetic and artistic work fits into this scheme of cosmic/psychic meaning. 

Only four of an infinite number of possible examples are included. The first is a general statement of Blake's scheme. Second with his story of the Prodigal Son in which Jesus gave us a personal paradigm of the history of the Chosen People and of the Human Race. Third is the career of alcoholism's progressive deterioration until the sufferer hits bottom, followed by recovery, providing a striking modern analogy, although not Blakean per se. Blake did use as a recurring motif the story of Lazarus found in the Gospel of John. But the primary paradigm of this myth is the Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ. However Blake did not express this, probably did not fully realize it, until 1800 when he experiened an awakening.

This chapter illustrates the application of this fundamental myth in Blake's major poetic works. The development of Blake's epic will be traced through the various stages of his spiritual journey. In essence it's the same journey we all take; you could call it the history of Man. Blake called it the Circle of Destiny."

LIFE AS METAPHOR

First Posted March 2015

Few people who read Blake would deny that he is attempting to make his reader change the way he perceives his world. Our minds have been trained to see separate entities which are clearly differentiated. We have learned that things are either one thing or another. We measure and define, explain and rationalize. 

But what if words were pointers to ideas which were too big to be contained in words. What if each word opened the mind to ever expanding vistas of movement and activity. What if there were gates through which you could pass to enter unknown worlds. What if the world to which imagination can take us were all around us and inside us as well. What if we traveled through images of reality in a body which belongs to Eternity. Such a world would be the environs in which William Blake lived.

Blake's life can be thought of as a metaphor which he was using to describe the world which senses cannot access. He lived the joy and woe which permeates his poetic and visual images. He lived the death and the resurrection, and the journey of experience which connects the two. It was not enough to him to portray the Eternal, Infinite, Invisible world, he wanted to give access to that world to the brotherhood of man.

You are given the opportunity of viewing your own life as metaphor. You can become conscious that what we call reality is a mask which covers an "an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five". Your imagination will be expanded as was Blake's by exercising your "immortal Eyes ... inward into the Worlds of Thought".

Jerusalem, Plate 5, (E 147)
"Trembling I sit day and night, my friends are astonish'd at me.
Yet they forgive my wanderings, I rest not from my great task!
To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes
Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought: into Eternity
Ever expanding in the Bosom of God. the Human Imagination        
O Saviour pour upon me thy Spirit of meekness & love:
Annihilate the Selfhood in me, be thou all my life!"

Four Zoas, Night VIII, Page 114, (E 385)
"he [Man] rises to the Sun
And to the Planets of the Night & to the stars that gild
The Zodiac & the stars that sullen stand to north & south
He touches the remotest pole & in the Center weeps
That Man should Labour & sorrow & learn & forget & return
To the dark valley whence he came to begin his labours anew
In pain he sighs in pain he labours in his universe
Screaming in birds over the deep & howling in the Wolf
Over the slain & moaning in the cattle & in the winds
And weeping over Orc & Urizen in clouds & flaming fires  
And in the cries of birth & in the groans of death his voice 
Is heard throughout the Universe whereever a grass grows
Or a leaf buds   The Eternal Man is seen is heard   is felt
And all his Sorrows till he reassumes his ancient bliss

Such are the words of Ahania & Enion. Los hears & weeps  
And Los & Enitharmon took the Body of the Lamb 
Down from the Cross & placd it in a Sepulcher which Los had hewn
For himself in the Rock of Eternity trembling & in despair 
Jerusalem wept over the Sepulcher two thousand Years"

Songs of Innocence & of Experience, Plate 9, (E 9)
"And we are put on earth a little space, 
we may learn to bear the beams of love,
...
SONGS 10  
For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear
The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice.
Saying: come out from the grove my love & care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

HUMAN FORM

Blake Archive
Morgan Library and Museum
Jerusalem
Plate 99

 Genesis 1

[26] And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
[27] So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Since man is created in the image of God he/she has the potential for being as God is - an Eternal expression of Life in all of its dimensions. By placing his Image within man God gave Life Eternal to humanity.

Blake uses the term Divine Humanity to identify God - to identiy man he uses the term Human Form Divine. Both share the same nature. Blake wants man to realize that God has entered his creation and dwells within each individual, calling each to hear his voice and act his will. 

Blake realized that although each is created in God's image, each also has an individual will and individual characteristics. Blake looked within himself and within other people and saw internal divisions which separated humans from following God's will. Blake wrote in order to understand and to share the wisdom he acquired by following the truth he discerned. Blake's gift to us is to gain from him tools to preceive the working of the spirit within that we might give expression to that divine image planted within. 

Four Zoas, Night IX, Page 126, (E 395)

"Luvah & Vala henceforth you are Servants obey & live
You shall forget your former state return O Love in peace  
Into your place the place of seed not in the brain or heart
If Gods combine against Man Setting their Dominion above
The Human form Divine. Thrown down from their high Station       
In the Eternal heavens of Human Imagination: buried beneath 
In dark Oblivion with incessant pangs ages on ages
In Enmity & war first weakend then in stern repentance
They must renew their brightness & their disorganizd functions
Again reorganize till they resume the image of the human 
Cooperating in the bliss of Man obeying his Will
Servants to the infinite & Eternal of the Human form"
Luvah & Vala descended & enterd the Gates of Dark Urthona
And walkd from the hands of Urizen in the shadows of Valas Garden
Where the impressions of Despair & Hope for ever vegetate        
In flowers in fruits in fishes birds & beasts & clouds & waters
The land of doubts & shadows sweet delusions unformd hopes
They saw no more the terrible confusion of the wracking universe
They heard not  saw not  felt not  all the terrible confusion"

Auguries of Innocence, (E 492)

"Every Night & every Morn
Some to Misery are Born 
Every Morn & every Night
Auguries of Innocence, (E 492)

Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to Endless Night
We are led to Believe a Lie 
When we see not Thro the Eye 

Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night
When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light
God Appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night 
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day"

Milton, Plate 33 [35], (E 131)

 (And thus the Seven Angels instructed him (Milton) & thus they converse.

We are not Individuals but States: Combinations of Individuals   
We were Angels of the Divine Presence: & were Druids in Annandale
Compelld to combine into Form by Satan, the Spectre of Albion,
Who made himself a God &, destroyed the Human Form Divine.
But the Divine Humanity & Mercy gave us a Human Form      [Hebrew text]
                                                                                                  as multitudes
Because we were combind in Freedom & holy Brotherhood     Vox Populi 

While those combind by Satans Tyranny first in the blood of War
And Sacrifice &, next, in Chains of imprisonment: are Shapeless Rocks
Retaining only Satans Mathematic Holiness, Length: Bredth & Highth
Calling the Human Imagination: which is the Divine Vision & Fruition
In which Man liveth eternally: madness & blasphemy, against      
Its own Qualities, which are Servants of Humanity, not Gods or Lords[.]
Distinguish therefore States from Individuals in those States.
States Change: but Individual Identities never change nor cease:
You cannot go to Eternal Death in that which can never Die.
Satan & Adam are States Created into Twenty-seven Churches       
And thou O Milton art a State about to be Created
Called Eternal Annihilation that none but the Living shall
Dare to enter: & they shall enter triumphant over Death
And Hell & the Grave! States that are not, but ah! Seem to be.

Judge then of thy Own Self: thy Eternal Lineaments explore       
What is Eternal & what Changeable? & what Annihilable!

The Imagination is not a State: it is the Human Existence itself
Affection or Love becomes a State, when divided from Imagination
The Memory is a State always, & the Reason is a State
Created to be Annihilated & a new Ratio Created                  
Whatever can be Created can be Annihilated Forms cannot
The Oak is cut down by the Ax, the Lamb falls by the Knife
But their Forms Eternal Exist, For-ever. Amen Hallelujah

Thus they converse with the Dead watching round the Couch of Death.
For God himself enters Death's Door always with those that enter 
And lays down in the Grave with them, in Visions of Eternity
Till they awake & see Jesus & the Linen Clothes lying
That the Females had Woven for them, & the Gates of their Fathers House"

 Letters, To Butts, (E 712)

     "I each particle gazed
     Astonishd Amazed
     For each was a Man
     Human formd.  Swift I ran
     For they beckond to me
     Remote by the Sea
     Saying.  Each grain of Sand
     Every Stone on the Land
     Each rock & each hill
     Each fountain & rill
     Each herb & each tree
     Mountain hill Earth & Sea
     Cloud Meteor & Star
     Are Men Seen Afar"

Milton, Plate 19 [21], (E 112)

"Urizen emerged from his Rocky Form & from his Snows,
And he also darkend his brows: freezing dark rocks between
The footsteps. and infixing deep the feet in marble beds:
That Milton labourd with his journey, & his feet bled sore
Upon the clay now chang'd to marble; also Urizen rose,
And met him on the shores of Arnon; & by the streams of the brooks    

Silent they met, and silent strove among the streams, of Arnon
Even to Mahanaim, when with cold hand Urizen stoop'd down
And took up water from the river Jordan: pouring on
To Miltons brain the icy fluid from his broad cold palm.
But Milton took of the red clay of Succoth, moulding it with care
Between his palms: and filling up the furrows of many years
Beginning at the feet of Urizen, and on the bones
Creating new flesh on the Demon cold, and building him,
As with new clay a Human form in the Valley of Beth Peor."

Four Zoas, Night VIII, Page 100 (FIRST PORTION), (E 372) 
"From out the War of Urizen & Tharmas recieving them
Into his hands. Then Enitharmon erected Looms in Lubans Gate
And calld the Looms Cathedron in these Looms She wove the Spectres
Bodies of Vegetation Singing lulling Cadences to drive away
Despair from the poor wandering spectres and Los loved them
With a parental love for the Divine hand was upon him
And upon Enitharmon & the Divine Countenance shone
In Golgonooza Looking down the Daughters of Beulah saw
With joy the bright Light & in it a Human form 
And knew he was the Saviour Even Jesus & they worshipped
Astonishd Comforted Delighted in notes of Rapturous Extacy 
All Beulah stood astonishd Looking down to Eternal Death
They saw the Saviour beyond the Pit of death & destruction
For whether they lookd upward they saw the Divine Vision
Or whether they lookd downward still they saw the Divine Vision
Surrounding them on all sides beyond sin & death & hell"

Jerusalem, Plate 99, (E 258) 

"All Human Forms identified even Tree Metal Earth & Stone. all
Human Forms identified, living going forth & returning wearied
Into the Planetary lives of Years Months Days & Hours reposing
And then Awaking into his Bosom in the Life of Immortality.

And I heard the Name of their Emanations they are named Jerusalem

                                    The End of The Song 

                                          of Jerusalem"

                                                                                                                                                      

CREATIVE FANTASY

 First posted Feb 2019

Wikipedia Commons
Milton's Mysterious Dream,
Watercolor Illustration to Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso

Since the unconscious is an aspect of the mind to which the conscious mind has little access, there is difficulty in discerning its content. If an individual behaves in a way which is inconsistent with the values to which he consciously ascribes, he may be under the control of unconscious forces which are unacceptable to the society in which he lives. The apostle Paul said, "For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do." If a person is seeking to understand why he fails to measure up to the standards which he consciously sets for himself, he may find some answers in myth and dreams for these are ways the unconscious makes itself known to the conscious mind.

By seeking to understand what messages are conveyed to his own psyche by dreams and myth one learns to assimilate a broader range of experience which applies to him and to the world consciousness to which he belongs.

Kathleen Raine on Page 126 of Defending Ancient Springs quoted Jung as recalling 'the unending myth of death and rebirth, and of the multitudinous figures who weave in and out of this mystery': 

"Of this story no single life can realize more than a part; but beneath our individual experience is the pooled experience of our inheritance, Jung's 'collective unconscious' which discloses itself so he says, only through the medium of creative fantasy. 'It comes alive in the creative man, it reveals itself in the vision of the artist, in the inspiration of the thinker, in the inner experience of the mystic.' the mythologies of all races are its embodiment; the psychologists are newcomers in a field long known to the poets; a fact they are apt to forget.
...
Dreams resemble myths in their personification and symbolic forms and enactments; and the knowledge which myths and dreams alike mediate and embody is not conceptual knowledge; in symbols the soul can speak, but not the discursive reason. Explanations come afterwards and are far less fundamental; one has only to think of the countless expositions given some myth, which always survives these attempts to throw light upon its mystery. But the sign of the initiate of the ancient Mysteries was the finger laid upon the lips, the sign of silence. The Mysteries cannot be divulged because they elude verbal formulation."

---

Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Song 41, (E 24)
"The Angel  

I Dreamt a Dream! what can it mean?
And that I was a maiden Queen:
Guarded by an Angel mild:
Witless woe, was ne'er beguil'd!

And I wept both night and day
And he wip'd my tears away
And I wept both day and night
And hid from him my hearts delight

So he took his wings and fled:
Then the morn blush'd rosy red:
I dried my tears & armed my fears,
With ten thousand shields and spears,

Soon my Angel came again;
I was arm'd, he came in vain:
For the time of youth was fled            
And grey hairs were on my head." 

Europe, Plate 9, (E 62)
"Enitharmon slept,                                                
Eighteen hundred years: Man was a Dream!
The night of Nature and their harps unstrung:
She slept in middle of her nightly song,
Eighteen hundred years, a female dream!"

Milton, Plate 15 [17], (E 109)
"As when a man dreams, he reflects not that his body sleeps,
Else he would wake; so seem'd he entering his Shadow: but
With him the Spirits of the Seven Angels of the Presence
Entering; they gave him still perceptions of his Sleeping Body;
Which now arose and walk'd with them in Eden, as an Eighth   
Image Divine tho' darken'd; and tho walking as one walks
In sleep; and the Seven comforted and supported him.

Like as a Polypus that vegetates beneath the deep!
They saw his Shadow vegetated underneath the Couch
Of death: for when he enterd into his Shadow: Himself:           
His real and immortal Self: was as appeard to those
Who dwell in immortality, as One sleeping on a couch
Of gold; and those in immortality gave forth their Emanations
Like Females of sweet beauty, to guard round him & to feed
His lips with food of Eden in his cold and dim repose!           

But to himself he seemd a wanderer lost in dreary night."