SHADOWY WORLD

 Yale Center for British Art
Jerusalem
Plate 14

  

We live within force fields which carry 'messages.' Receivers may be either the senses of animate beings or sensors which respond in ways outside of sense perception. The world outside of our limited consciousness we perceive as shadow because we have not developed our means of perception.

Blake wrote:
"There is a Void, outside of Existence, which if enterd into 
Englobes itself & becomes a Womb, such was Albions Couch 
A pleasant Shadow of Repose calld Albions lovely Land

His Sublime & Pathos become Two Rocks fixd in the Earth
His Reason his Spectrous Power, covers them above                
Jerusalem his Emanation is a Stone laying beneath
O [Albion behold Pitying] behold the Vision of Albion"
Jerusalem, Frontispiece

In the book Four Archetypes, by C G Jung on page 57 is the statement:

"I should only like to point out that the inferior function is practically identical with the dark side of the human personality. The darkness which clings to every personality is the door into the unconscious and the gateway of dreams, from which the those two twilight figures, the shadow and the anima, step into our nightly visions or, remaining invisible, take possession of our ego-consciousness. A man possessed by his own shadow is forever standing in his own light and falling into his own traps."

The Shadow world to Blake is not distant but the world in which we live. We enter into it when we relinquish our ability to perceive Eternity. The features of the natural landscape are perceived to be our reality rather than messengers pointing to realities of the Eternal dimension. However this world is for a purpose: 
"But whatever is visible to the Generated Man, 
Is a Creation of mercy & love, from the Satanic Void."
Although this world of shadow is a poor substitute for the Eternal world of Reality it is provided to man as a gift and a mercy until he is capable of bearing the light which is too strong or bright for his weak senses to assimilate into a more expansive vision.

Ego-consciousness in Jung's system develops out of its predecessor the unconscious, which continues to exist and to maintain abilities which assert influence. The tendency of the ego-consciousness is to reject the content of the unconscious as obsolete and unworthy of attention. Jung asserts that if the unconscious is not allowed to find expression in the conscious mind it will subvert activities of the ego-consciousness through surreptitious devices.
 
It could be said that Blake's shadow world in which we live is Jung's unconscious which the ego-consciousness is constantly attempting to draw into the realm of consciousness. However, Blake's Eternity is not Jung's consciousness because it is not limited to the individual as is Jung's concept. A point at which Blake and Jung agree is that there is no need to discard the dark contents which are unacceptable to a higher level of development. The material whose value has gone unrecognized can be transformed and assimilated as the psyche is made whole.

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Jerusalem, Plate 13, (E 157)
"The Vegetative Universe, opens like a flower from the Earths center:
In which is Eternity. It expands in Stars to the Mundane Shell   
And there it meets Eternity again, both within and without,
And the abstract Voids between the Stars are the Satanic Wheels.

There is the Cave; the Rock; the Tree; the Lake of Udan Adan;
The Forest, and the Marsh, and the Pits of bitumen deadly:
The Rocks of solid fire: the Ice valleys: the Plains             
Of burning sand: the rivers, cataract & Lakes of Fire:
The Islands of the fiery Lakes: the Trees of Malice: Revenge:
And black Anxiety; and the Cities of the Salamandrine men:
(But whatever is visible to the Generated Man,
Is a Creation of mercy & love, from the Satanic Void.)           
The land of darkness flamed but no light, & no repose:
The land of snows of trembling, & of iron hail incessant:
The land of earthquakes: and the land of woven labyrinths:
The land of snares & traps & wheels & pit-falls & dire mills:
The Voids, the Solids, & the land of clouds & regions of waters:
With their inhabitants: in the Twenty-seven Heavens beneath Beulah:
Self-righteousnesses conglomerating against the Divine Vision:
A Concave Earth wondrous, Chasmal, Abyssal, Incoherent!
Forming the Mundane Shell: above; beneath: on all sides surrounding
Golgonooza: Los walks round the walls night and day.
He views the City of Golgonooza, & its smaller Cities:
The Looms & Mills & Prisons & Work-houses of Og & Anak:
The Amalekite: the Canaanite: the Moabite: the Egyptian:
And all that has existed in the space of six thousand years:
Permanent, & not lost not lost nor vanishd, & every little act,  
Word, work, & wish, that has existed, all remaining still
In those Churches ever consuming & ever building by the Spectres
Of all the inhabitants of Earth wailing to be Created:
Shadowy to those who dwell not in them, meer possibilities:
But to those who enter into them they seem the only substances   
For every thing exists & not one sigh nor smile nor tear,
PLATE 14
One hair nor particle of dust, not one can pass away."