Spectre (Blake)
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The Spectre in the mythology of William Blake is part of a four-fold analysis of humans. In Jerusalem, Blake's prophetic book, it is introduced in this way:
- I see the Four-fold Man, The Humanity in deadly sleep
- And its fallen Emanation, the Spectre and its cruel Shadow.
Blake defines it this way: The Spectre is the Reasoning Power in Man, and when separated from Imagination and closing itself as in steel in a Ratio of Things of Memory, It thence frames Laws and Moralities [...]. That is also from Jerusalem. The Spectre also occurs in Milton and Vala, or the Four Zoas.