MALE/FEMALE

Quoting from Larry Clayton's online Blake book, RAM HORN'D WITH GOLD concerning the role that the male/ female dichotomy plays in Blake's system, we read:

"Man in Eternity is androgynous. In Beulah, which means Married, the sexes are divided into loving and restful contraries. With the Fall the Female Will becomes dominant; the Human Form deteriorates to the sexual in which male and female, spirit and matter, exist in a state of constant warfare. Man has fallen into the fourth world of Ulro. But whatever falls may rise again."

Larry quoted the following passage from Milton Percival who quoted it from Franz Hartman; it is worth passing on again: "Woman as such represents the will (including love and desire), and man as such represents intellect (including the imagination).Woman represents substance; man represents spirit. Man imagines; woman executes. Man creates images; woman renders them substantial.
"The divine man (the angel) is male and female in one; such Adam was before the woman became separated from him. He is like the sun; the woman as such resembles the moon, receiving her light from the sun, and man without woman (in him) is a consuming fire in want of fuel."

Larry Clayton says: " This means that Blake (and Paracelsus) in their use of sex have a primarily metaphysical rather than a physical connotation."

Read more in RAM HORN'D WITH GOLD.