William Blake's mythology


The prophetic books of the English poet and artist William Blake contain an invented mythology, in which Blake worked to encode his spiritual and political ideas into a prophecy for a new age. This desire to recreate the cosmos is the heart of his work and his psychology. His myths often described the struggle between enlightenment and free love on the one hand, and restrictive education and morals on the other.

The Fall of Albion

The longest elaboration of this private myth-cycle was also his longest poem, The Four Zoas: The Death and Judgment of Albion The Ancient Man, written in the late 1790s but left in manuscript form at the time of his death. In this work, Blake traces the fall of Albion, who was "originally fourfold but was self-divided". This theme was revisited later, more definitively but perhaps less directly, in his other epic prophetic works, Milton a Poem and Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion.
The parts into which Albion is divided are the four Zoas:
The Blake pantheon also includes feminine emanations that have separated from an integrated male being, as Eve separated from Adam:
The fall of Albion and his division into the Zoas and their emanations are also the central themes of Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion.
Rintrah first appears in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, personifying revolutionary wrath. He is later grouped together with other spirits of rebellion in The Vision of the Daughters of Albion:
Scholarship on Blake has not recovered a "perfected" version of Blake's myth. The characters in it have to be treated more like a repertory company, capable of dramatising his ideas. On the other hand, the psychological roots of his work have been revealed, and are now much more accessible than they were a century ago.
America a Prophecy is also one of the "prophetic works". Here, the "soft soul" of America appears as Oothoon.
Other works concerning this pantheon: