TRUE MAN

Wikipedia Commons

Illustrations to Blair's The Grave

Death of the Good Old Man

In the physical world - the world of time and space - we are conditioned to think of ourselves as physical beings. The body which provides the senses and feeds information to the mind and spirit is a physical body which is transitory. Temporarily associated with the physical body is a spiritual body which is perceived by Blake as the 'true man.'

Underlying the material body is the 'lineaments divine' from which the character is derived. It is up to the individual to 'explore' his 'Eternal Lineaments' in order to allow his Spiritual Body to thrive. The release of the Spiritual Body at physical death is perceived as Resurrection.

This is a passage from William Blake by Kathleen Raine: 

"The spirit is already free; and 'the spiritual body or angel' is the true man, released from its 'excrementitous husk and covering'. Here Blake is close to Swedenborg, whose disembodied spirits are fully human but released from the restrictions of a material body. Swedenborg taught that the Resurrection of the Dead is the freeing of the spiritual body from its earthly envelope, the rotten rags' of mortality...The physical body was beautiful to Blake in so far as it reflected the lineaments of an informing soul or spirit, the 'celestial body' of a famous passage of St Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians, which Blake invokes in his emblem accompanying the poem 'To Tirzah' (c, 1801): It is raised a spiritual body." (Page 112)

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ALL RELIGIONS are ONE (E 1)

"PRINCIPLE 1st  That the Poetic Genius is the true Man. and that
the body or outward form of Man is derived from the Poetic
Genius.  Likewise that the forms of all things are derived from
their Genius. which by the Ancients was call'd an Angel & Spirit
& Demon."

Jerusalem, Plate 98, (E 257)
"North stood
The labyrinthine Ear. Circumscribing & Circumcising the excrementitious
Husk & Covering into Vacuum evaporating revealing the lineaments of Man
Driving outward the Body of Death in an Eternal Death & Resurrection"  

Milton, Plate 14 [15], (E 108)

"The loud voic'd Bard terrify'd took refuge in Miltons bosom

Then Milton rose up from the heavens of Albion ardorous!         
The whole Assembly wept prophetic, seeing in Miltons face
And in his lineaments divine the shades of Death & Ulro
He took off the robe of the promise, & ungirded himself from the oath of God

And Milton said, I go to Eternal Death! The Nations still
Follow after the detestable Gods of Priam; in pomp               
Of warlike selfhood, contradicting and blaspheming.
When will the Resurrection come; to deliver the sleeping body
From corruptibility: O when Lord Jesus wilt thou come?"

Milton, Plate 21 [23], (E 115)

"And all in Heaven, saw in the nether regions of the Imagination
In Ulro beneath Beulah, the vast breach of Miltons descent.
But I knew not that it was Milton, for man cannot know
What passes in his members till periods of Space & Time
Reveal the secrets of Eternity: for more extensive               
Than any other earthly things, are Mans earthly lineaments."

Milton, Plate 22 [24], (E 117)

"for not one Moment
Of Time is lost, nor one Event of Space unpermanent
But all remain: every fabric of Six Thousand Years               
Remains permanent: tho' on the Earth where Satan
Fell, and was cut off all things vanish & are seen no more
They vanish not from me & mine, we guard them first & last
The generations of men run on in the tide of Time
But leave their destind lineaments permanent for ever & ever.    

So spoke Los as we went along to his supreme abode." 

Milton, Plate 32 [35], (E 132)

"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"

Jerusalem, Plate 38 [43], (E 185)

"Humanity, who is the Only General and Universal Form         
To which all Lineaments tend & seek with love & sympathy
All broad & general principles belong to benevolence
Who protects minute particulars, every one in their own identity.

Jerusalem, Plate 59, (E 211)

But the Divine Lamb stood beside Jerusalem. oft she saw          
The lineaments Divine & oft the Voice heard, & oft she said:

O Lord & Saviour, have the Gods of the Heathen pierced thee?"

Four Zoas, Night II,  Page 25, (E 314)

"And the leopards coverd with skins of beasts tended the roaring fires
Sublime distinct their lineaments divine of human beauty   
The tygers of wrath called the horses of instruction from their mangers
They unloos'd them & put on the harness of gold & silver & ivory
In human forms distinct they stood round Urizen prince of Light
Petrifying all the Human Imagination into rock & sand" 

Descriptive Catalogue, (E 541)

" He who does
not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger
and better light than his perishing mortal eye can see does not
imagine at all.

Descriptive Catalogue, (E 544)

"The Beauty proper for sublime art, is lineaments, or
forms and features that are capable of being the receptacles of
intellect; accordingly the Painter has given in his beautiful
man, his own idea of intellectual Beauty." 

Vision of last Judgment, (E 560)

"I intreat then that the Spectator will attend to the 
Hands & Feet to the Lineaments of the Countenances they are all
descriptive of Character & not a line is drawn without intention"

First Corinthians 15 - Phillips Translation

15:35-38 - But perhaps someone will ask, "How is the resurrection achieved? With what sort of body do the dead arrive?" Now that is talking without using your minds! In your own experience you know that a seed does not germinate without itself "dying". When you sow a seed you do not sow the "body" that will eventually be produced, but bare grain, of wheat, for example, or one of the other seeds. God gives the seed a "body" according to his laws - a different "body" to each kind of seed.
15:39 - Then again, even in this world, all flesh is not identical. There is a difference in the flesh of human beings, animals, fish and birds.
15:40-41 - There are bodies which exist in this world, and bodies which exist in heaven. These bodies are not, as it were, in competition; the splendour of an earthly body is quite a different thing from the splendour of a heavenly body. The sun, the moon and the stars all have their own particular splendour, while among the stars themselves there are different kinds of splendour.
15:42-44 - These are illustrations here of the raising of the dead. The body is "sown" in corruption; it is raised beyond the reach of corruption. It is "sown" in dishonour; it is raised in splendour. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. As there is a natural body so will there be a spiritual body.
15:45 - It is written, moreover, that: 'The first man Adam became a living being'.
15:46-49 - So the last Adam is a life-giving Spirit. But we should notice that the order is "natural" first and then "spiritual". The first man came out of the earth, a material creature. The second man came from Heaven and was the Lord himself. For the life of this world men are made like the material man; but for the life that is to come they are made like the one from Heaven. So that just as we have been made like the material pattern, so we shall be made like the Heavenly pattern.
15:50 - For I assure you, my brothers, it is utterly impossible for flesh and blood to possess the kingdom of God. The transitory could never possess the everlasting.
...
15:54 - So when the perishable is lost in the imperishable, the mortal lost in the immortal, this saying will come true: 'Death is swallowed up in victory' 'O death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?'