Spectre (Blake)
Encyclopedia
The Spectre in William Blake's mythology
is one aspect of the fourfold nature of the human psyche. It is introduced in Blake's prophetic book
Jerusalem:
Elsewhere in Jerusalem, Blake defines it this way: The Spectre is the Reasoning Power in Man, and when separated from Imagination and closing itself as in steel in a Ratio of Things of Memory, It thence frames Laws and Moralities [...]. The Spectre also appears in Milton and The Four Zoas
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William Blake's mythology
The prophetic books of the English poet and artist William Blake contain a rich invented mythology , in which Blake worked to encode his revolutionary spiritual and political ideas into a prophecy for a new age. This desire to recreate the cosmos is the heart of his work and his psychology...
is one aspect of the fourfold nature of the human psyche. It is introduced in Blake's prophetic book
William Blake's prophetic books
The prophetic books of the English poet and artist William Blake are a series of difficult and obscure poetic works. While Blake worked as a commercial illustrator, these books were ones that he produced, with his own engravings, as an extended and largely private project...
Jerusalem:
- I see the Four-fold Man, The Humanity in deadly sleep
- And its fallen Emanation, the Spectre and its cruel Shadow.
Elsewhere in Jerusalem, Blake defines it this way: The Spectre is the Reasoning Power in Man, and when separated from Imagination and closing itself as in steel in a Ratio of Things of Memory, It thence frames Laws and Moralities [...]. The Spectre also appears in Milton and The Four Zoas
Vala, or The Four Zoas
Vala, or The Four Zoas refers to one of the incompleted prophetic books by English poet William Blake, begun in 1797. The titular main characters of the book are The Four Zoas: , who were created by the fall of Albion in Blake's mythology. It consists of nine books, referred to as "nights"...
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