Albion

Albion has a composite character second to none. It means (originally) England, but at a deeper level it means the cosmos, which is a man!. (In this Blake agrees with the Adam Kadmon of the Kabbalah, the Heavenly Man of Philo, St. Paul's heavenly man, the second Adam, and the cosmic man of Gnostic mythology, and the Hindu god, Krishna.)

       Albion, the eternal man, fell asleep into mortality in Beulah. We read at the beginning of Night 2 these ominous words:

Rising upon his Couch of Death Albion beheld his Sons
Turning his Eyes outward to Self, losing the Divine Vision. Albion called Urizen & said:
"Take thou possession! take this Scepter! go forth in my might
For I am weary, & must sleep in the dark sleep of Death.

He divides and divides into four parts, the four zoas (strangely similar to the four functions promulgated a hundred years later by Carl Jung).

       This dissolution of the cosmic man, described at the beginning of The Four Zoas, passes through the Circle of Destiny, and at the end of The Four Zoas he awakens from his mortal sleep and resumes his place in Eternity. That in essence is a thumbnail account of Blake's myth: descent from Eternity, struggle, and eventually return.

Jerusalem plate 76

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the archaic name for Great Britain. For other uses, see Albion (disambiguation).

Not to be confused with Alban.

The White Cliffs of Dover may have given rise to the name Albion

Albion (Ancient Greek: Ἀλβίων) is the oldest known name of the island of Great Britain. Today, it is still sometimes used poetically to refer to the island. The name for Scotland in the Celtic languages is related to Albion: Alba in Scottish Gaelic,Alba (genitive Alban, dative Albain) in Irish, Nalbin in Manx and Alban in Welsh,Cornish and Breton. These names were later Latinised as Albania and Anglicised as Albany, which were once alternative names for Scotland.

New Albion and Albionoria ("Albion of the North") were briefly suggested as names of Canada during the period of the Canadian Confederation.^[1][2] CaptainArthur Phillip originally named the Sydney Cove "New Albion", but for uncertain reasons the colony acquired the name "Sydne