First posted February 2020
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Wikipedia Commons
Illustrations to Blair' The Grave
Reunion of the Soul and the Body |
"Therefore the spirit of the depths forced me to speak to my soul, to call on her as a living and self-existing being. I had to become aware that I had lost my soul.
From this we learn how the spirit of the depths considers the soul: he sees her as a living and self-existing being, and with this he contradicts the spirit of this time for whom the soul is a thing dependent on man, which lets herself be judged and arranged, and whose circumference can be grasped. I had to accept that what I had previously called my soul was not my soul, but a dead system. Hence I had to speak to my soul as to something far off and unknown, which did not exist through me, but through whom I existed."
Blake knew himself to be a spiritual being living in a spiritual world. He could discern the activity of spirits in his daily life. They appeared to him, they spoke to him they directed him, and they became the subject which he depicted in his writing and painting. He enhanced his spiritual perception by acknowledging and exercising it.
The conundrum in which man finds himself is that he is two men living in two worlds. The natural man lives in both the natural and spiritual worlds. The home of the spiritual man is both the natural and spiritual worlds. Blake preferred live as a spiritual man in a spiritual world but was forced more often to live in the natural world without relinquishing his spiritual proclivities. To some extent we choose which world will be real to us, or we oscillate between the two.
Blake did not consider the Spiritual World to be exclusively accessible to spiritual men because all can awake and be shown the hidden world. The eye is capable of seeing more than the physical because man is capable of remembering the Eternal which is his origin. Little pieces of the Eternal are scattered in Time and Space to lure man away from the natural to the spiritual.
Jerusalem, Plate 62, (E 213)
"I see the Maternal Line, I behold the Seed of the Woman! ...
These are the Daughters of Vala, Mother of the Body of death
But I thy Magdalen behold thy Spiritual Risen Body
Shall Albion arise? I know he shall arise at the Last Day!
I know that in my flesh I shall see God: but Emanations
Are weak. they know not whence they are, nor whither tend.
Jesus replied. I am the Resurrection & the Life.
I Die & pass the limits of possibility, as it appears
To individual perception. Luvah must be Created
And Vala; for I cannot leave them in the gnawing Grave.
But will prepare a way for my banished-ones to return"
Descriptive Catalogue, (E 541)
" A Spirit and a Vision are not, as the
modern philosophy supposes, a cloudy vapour or a
nothing: they are organized and minutely articulated beyond all
that the mortal and perishing nature can produce. 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. The painter of this work asserts that all his
imaginations appear to him infinitely more perfect and more
minutely organized than any thing seen by his
mortal eye. Spirits are organized men: Moderns wish to
draw figures without lines, and with great and heavy shadows;
are not shadows more unmeaning than lines, and more heavy? O
who can doubt this!"
Letters, (E 724)
"But if we fear to do the dictates of our
Angels & tremble at the Tasks set before us. if we refuse to do
Spiritual Acts. because of Natural Fears or Natural Desires! Who
can describe the dismal torments of such a state!--I too well
remember the Threats I heard!--If you who are organized by Divine
Providence for Spiritual communion. Refuse & bury your Talent in
the Earth even tho you should want Natural Bread."
Jerusalem, Plate 49, (E 199)
Learn therefore O Sisters to distinguish the Eternal Human
That walks about among the stones of fire in bliss & woe
Alternate! from those States or Worlds in which the Spirit travels:
This is the only means to Forgiveness of Enemies[.]
Four Zoas, Night IX, Page 117, (E 386)
"And Los & Enitharmon builded Jerusalem weeping
Over the Sepulcher & over the Crucified body
Which to their Phantom Eyes appear'd still in the Sepulcher
But Jesus stood beside them in the Spirit Separating
Their Spirit from their body. Terrified at Non Existence
For such they deemd the death of the body."
Letters, (E 705)
"Thirteen years ago. I lost a
brother & with his spirit I converse daily & hourly in the
Spirit. & See him in my remembrance in the regions of my
Imagination. I hear his advice & even now write from his
Dictate--Forgive me for expressing to you my Enthusiasm which I
wish all to partake of Since it is to me a Source of Immortal
Joy even in this world by it I am the companion of Angels"
Europe, Plate iii, (E 60)
"Then tell me, what is the material world, and is it dead?
He laughing answer'd: I will write a book on leaves of flowers,
If you will feed me on love-thoughts, & give me now and then
A cup of sparkling poetic fancies; so when I am tipsie,
I'll sing to you to this soft lute; and shew you all alive
The world, when every particle of dust breathes forth its joy.
I took him home in my warm bosom: as we went along
Wild flowers I gatherd; & he shew'd me each eternal flower:
He laugh'd aloud to see them whimper because they were pluck'd.
They hover'd round me like a cloud of incense: when I came
Into my parlour and sat down, and took my pen to write:
My Fairy sat upon the table, and dictated EUROPE."
Gates of Paradise, The Keys, (E 268)
11 Holy & cold I clipd the Wings
Of all Sublunary Things
12 And in depths of my Dungeons
Closed the Father & the Sons
13 But when once I did descry
The Immortal Man that cannot Die
14 Thro evening shades I haste away
To close the Labours of my Day
Acts 17
[27] That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:
[28] For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
First Corinthians 2
[10] But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
[11] For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
[12] Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
[13] Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
[14] But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
