IMAGINATION

British Museum
Songs of Innocence
Final Plate, Copy B

 

To Blake Imagination was the alternative to reason. Through imagination man had access to regions of thought that were unknown to reason. Reason is limited and static while imagination is expansive and dynamic. Reason delves within the spacial and temporal; imagination within the eternal.

Urthona is the Zoa who represents imagination. His work is carried on in the unconscious of man.  He corresponds to intuition in Jung's system. Urthona is an integrating force in the psyche providing the core organizing principles for the other Zoas.




Laocoon, (E 273) 
"The Eternal Body of Man is The IMAGINATION. 
that is God himself, The Divine Body, JESUS We are his Members"

Jerusalem, Plate 77, (E 231)
"I know of no other
Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of body
& mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination.   
  Imagination the real & eternal World of which this Vegetable
Universe is but a faint shadow & in which we shall live in our
Eternal or Imaginative Bodies, when these Vegetable Mortal Bodies
are no more."

Jerusalem, Plate 5, (E 147) 
"Trembling I sit day and night, my friends are astonish'd at me.
Yet they forgive my wanderings, I rest not from my great task!
To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes
Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought: into Eternity
Ever expanding in the Bosom of God. the Human Imagination        
O Saviour pour upon me thy Spirit of meekness & love:
Annihilate the Selfhood in me, be thou all my life!
Guide thou my hand which trembles exceedingly upon the rock of ages,
While I write of the building of Golgonooza,"

Jerusalem, Plate 71, E 225)
"For all are Men in Eternity. Rivers Mountains Cities Villages,
All are Human & when you enter into their Bosoms you walk
In Heavens & Earths; as in your own Bosom you bear your Heaven
And Earth, & all you behold, tho it appears Without it is Within
In your Imagination of which this World of Mortality is but a Shadow."