PSYCHOLOGICAL STRUGGLE

America, Plate 7

This post follows Air, Water, Earth & Fire.






Here is another quote from William Blake's Circle of Destiny by Milton O Percival.

"The psychological struggle, set forth as a war of the elements for dominion over Albion, is Blake's war of the Gods. Its scale is commensurate. The Zoas are giant figures whose impulses and activities are reflected in every portion of the cosmos. Moreover their war, like the contention of the elements, is never-ending. As the psychological components of man in his struggle toward the light they know the frustration of ages; but, like man, they cannot be extinguished. Vanquished in the struggle, they die only to be born again for renewed cycles of searching and strife.

"It is in his presentation of the Zoas that much of the power of Blake's myth lies. They are not the bloodless abstractions common to allegory. Blake believed in them. They are in consequence, realities of the imagination, with power to terrify us as they terrified their creator. No other poet has given us so profound a sense of the helplessness of man before the primal forces of life; and no other poet, so passionate a denial of that helplessness. He fears these forces, because he see them as demonic, with power over him; but he takes hope from the fact that these forces are in him - that they are himself. When man shall have brought them again into harmony, they will become once more his willing servants." (Page 20)

Milton, PLATE 32 [35], (E 131)

"But the Divine Humanity & Mercy gave us a Human      [Hebrew text]

 Form                                                                                    as multitudes

Because we were combind in Freedom & holy             Vox Populi

 Brotherhood

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."

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"