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William Blake, Fourfold Vision: Bringing together ordinary world and the otherworld

The Forest is a place, where the invisible world is close. It is a place for imagination. The Forest is more than the trees. It is the place for the visionary to see cosmic life.

One of the most extraordinary and influential artists and poets was William Blake. We can grasp the power of imagination through him and other writers of the beginning of romanticism. But there is more to it. Blake opposed the materialistic worldview and kept a much longer tradition alive—a tradition of seeing a deeper truth in the ordinary world.

However, there are a couple of points here, that make Blake particularly interesting: 

William Blake – A Visionary in the era of enlightenment

Unlike some romanticists or modern esoterics, he is not out of touch with the ordinary world, he seeks the connection with the other world, the eternity in his words, and our oft bleak and dark everyday world.

Another remarkable thing about Blake is that he is a shamanic figure without the typical initiation as a turning point in his life. He seems to be aware of the other world from the very beginning.

Furthermore, his visions don’t seem mysterious or as hard to understand encounters with the unknown. 

His Christian upbringing allowed him to shape his creative works inspired by visionary experiences in a unique cosmology that includes Christianity and elements from antiquity.

He is if we will a natural-born daimonic man, a person at home in both worlds. Unlike many people, Blake embraces the otherworld.

Blake seems, like Wordsworth, never has lost his childlike imagination. However, it is not imagination in the way we see it today, but a way of seeing. There is more than meets the eye:

Blake’s Double-Vision

“Blake distinguished between seeing with the eye and seeing through it. He insisted that his poems are not just figures of speech, but true accounts of the natural world transformed (invariably personified) by the power of the creative imagination”. (Patrick Harpur, Daimonic Reality, Page 90)

A famous Blake quote refers to the sun in the morning: 

Do you not see a round disk of fire somewhat like a guinea?

Oh no, no, I see an Innumerable Company of The Heavenly Host….

(William Blake)

This is double-vision. Seeing the literal thing but this literal thing is like a symbol representing a larger reality, a deeper meaning. It might be difficult to understand for modern Westerners this idea. Blake was still with one foot in the older traditions of a more magical, spiritual worldview and with the other foot in the scientific worldview of the Enlightenment. He is famous for his criticism of the modern worldview labeled Newton’s Sleep. 

Blake’s State Of Mind: Ulro, Generation, Beulah, Eternity

Therefore he developed a model, a system of different levels of vision or states of mind:

Four-fold Vision

Ulro = mostly presenting the single vision, a materialistic worldview, the world as data in modern terms

Generation = a view focused on production and reproduction without higher goals

Beulah = a more empathic worldview with the dark side of moralism

Eden or Eternity = which is also the four-fold vision. A coexistence with the divine, where the otherworld is seen too. The spiritual dimension becomes real and is seen as the normal material world.

Mark Vernon offers an excellent introduction to Blake’s system of the states of mind in The Four-Fold Imagination, What we can learn from William Blake’s visionary imagination.

Of course, this is not a view offered in everyday life, it is the goal of shamans,  of meditation of a life-long quest. However, it is available for everyone who opens his eyes, “A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees” Blake says. But we can learn to no longer see the world as the fool sees it.

It is books like Daimonic Reality by Patrick Harpur that offer a field guide to reconnecting with these deeper dimensions, to understand a four-fold vision.

One thing that we need to keep in mind is, that we don’t know if the higher realms are only the heavenly realm Blake envisions in some of his poetry. There are darker, dangerous realms out there, which Blake recognized too. This is the Forest Dark.

Visionary Experiences in The Forest Dark

Is it only that the daimonic world appears threatening because it is suppressed in our times? That would be the Freudian view, but if we look at the endless reports of visionary encounters a more complex image comes to light.

The Forest Dark. It’s no secret that many encounters with the unknown realms ended in a catastrophe. Fairies and aliens abduct people into their fairy realm. People go missing as the famous Referend Kirk who investigated the secret Commonwealth. People die or lose their wits. This is perhaps the most common danger of otherworldly encounters and visionary experiences They are not always a blessing. The trained mind who learned fourfold vision may be better prepared to handle mind-blowing visionary encounters. However often the Otherworld seems to choose the inexperienced wanderer in the darkest corner of the woods.

Blake and others recognized this special quality of the forest: 

“Shelley, Keats, and Blake may have captured the wonders of nature but they were just as quick to recognize its destructive forces and temptations, horrors and alienation. A reaction to the Enlightenment Romantic writers went deep into the woods, as their ancestors had before them, to find, monsters and miracles.”

From: Lost in the Wildwood: Sylvan Dread In Weird Fiction

A forest is a place where certain energies appear to gather, a borderland inviting daimonic creatures and a portal to the higher dimensions. In the outstanding anthology there are more good notes about the specific quality of the forest: “A living embodiment of our dreams and nightmares, the forest has played an ancient and vital role in shaping the human imagination and literature.”

It is in the forest where our ideas of existence are tested, where initiation and metamorphosis happen. A four-fold vision can happen here, perhaps more easily, but it can be unpredictable, as we can’t know which forces reside in the deep forests from the very beginning of time.

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A vision of frightening topicality: The Second Coming By William Butler Yeats.

These days, one of the most famous poems of the 20th century comes to mind. Williams Butler Yeat’s Apocalyptic Vision The Second Coming has never felt as true as it is now:

….”Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity….”

Not much interpretation is needed here regarding this excerpt from the first stanza. We will see much more which sounds like a prophecy finally coming true. However, the true dimension of possibilities comes to mind if we delve into the background of the origins of this visionary poem.

Automatic Writing In The Woods

Emily Ludolph writes in JSTOR Daily: “Ashdown Forest, William Butler Yeats, and his new bride Georgie Hyde-Lees were having a miserable first few days of marriage”. Having discovered that her new husband W.B. Yeats was writing to Isold Gonne, a woman he intended to marry before Georgie became his wife, she used the common interest in the occult to attract W.B. Yeats more to her. In the Ashdown Forest in Sussex, she introduced him to automatic writing. This was a popular thing during the time and a way male writers abused women as a medium or muse for inspiration. It was believed that a spirit was dictating the words which were written down by the female writer.

W. B. Yeats was fascinated and endless sessions of automatic writing followed. Like other male writers he never credited Georgie when using the material. We do not know if any inspiration for the later famous poem The Second Coming originated from these sessions in the woods, but it reminds us that the Forest Dark is always a place of connection with the otherworld and it was definitely something W.B. Yeats was into. We can assume that W. B. Yeats saw himself and his medium Georgie as visioners. The Second Coming is a visionary experience:

The Spiritus Mundi is the source of all things.

It is important to see W.B. Yeats’s interest in inspiration from higher, spiritual realms not so much in the sense of ghosts or demons dictating something to a writer in trance. Another part of the poem refers to a well-known philosophical concept also known as anima mundi:

“Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: “…

Spiritus mundi (Anima mundi) is the world soul, a collective consciousness, a deeper realm of reality. It is, “according to several systems of thought, an intrinsic connection between all living beings, which relates to the world in much the same way as the soul is connected to the human body” (Wikipedia). Anima Mundi is an important concept in Neoplatonism. Plato identified the universe as a living being. Anima Mundi is constitutional for these antique cosmology as for Gnosticism. But it is also a concept that modern philosophers believed in and notably, C. G. Jung.

Anima Mundi is like a living ocean that surrounds us, which is also in us. It is the place where ideas or archetypes live and from where they can emerge in our world. The definition of these archetypes is difficult if not impossible. We see them not directly but in the way they affect our world.

The concept of Spiritus mundi played an important part for Y. B. Yeats, but it means a lot for the gravity of the predictions in this poem as a visionary experience. Yeats didn’t claim this explicitly as a visionary experience but it is important that it is written like a visionary experience and we know about the automatic writing background with his wife Georgie. It reminds us of the otherworldly encounters with a darker god in the Old Testament.

INTERACTION WITH THE OTHERWORLD

The Spiritus Mundi is very similar to the Otherworld. The idea of the Otherworld exists in any culture as a larger realm. Another important observation is the introduction of the poem.

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;”

The first line contains a powerful image of the structure of the universe, our world combined with the otherworld. Think of galaxies intertwined, a maelstrom. This deeper fabric of reality sees history, events epochs not as isolated but connected with deeper currents in the otherworld. We are in the middle of a gyre. The rise and downfall of civilization, and the collapse of empires are not coincidental. There seem to be darker forces outside, invisible but intelligible steering the destiny of mankind. This is a grim outlook on history. It is not a unique view of Yeats. Gnosticism and Dualism favor similar concepts. The second line might refer to a breaking point, where the old do not understand the new.

This is another dark and grim prospect for human development. Indeed there have been vault lines again and again where things began to fall apart, where people did not longer understand each other, where communication failed and Chaos reigned. The end of the Dark Ages and the beginning of modern times was such a fault line and led to the Thirty Years’ War:

Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold.

Isn’t that what is happening now?

After introducing a sense of impending doom the author describes his vision (When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight)

It is a powerful image, an archetype rising from the depth of the spiritus mundi:

somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

THE BEAST

The second part of the poem turns the biblical promise of the Second Coming as the return of Jesus Christ into a nightmare. Instead of Christ, a horrifying beast from the realms of the anima mundi begins its journey into our world. The beast has raised many speculations and is identified later with monsters like Hitler or Stalin.

However, the interesting part is to closely examine this image. It bears attributes of an animal but this seems more like a non-human, non-animal lifeform, a dark energy, an archetype. The shock of the visioner he describes in the poem is because it is not only frightening but it is something familiar. Something which has been there all the time.

The imaginary lets us think the beast appears like a Sphinx. That fits with the attributes, it is bleak, cold, brutal, and impossible to read. It shows no emotion and more importantly, it has no empathy. It is an image of ultimate evil, the opposite of morality, of human dignity, the embodiment of a merciless monster. It immediately gives us a sense of terror.

This suggests something more fundamental rather than something that incarnates in a person. It is a corruption that poisons the land, the people, the society. It is something that encourages humans’ tendency to irrationality, chaos, and violence. It is an energy that makes humans in-human due to making them incapable of showing empathy. It uses the dark aspects of human nature and super-charges them, it takes away morality.

The events of the 21st century also the portrayal of chaos, darkness, and anarchy in film and literature are signs of a seismic event, a change in history, and the presence of the beast in the air. There is a feeling of global collapse, we see the undoing of society.

Even more, W.B. Yeats expresses a terrifying insight, “. That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle”. Has innocence been an illusion? Is the end of society as we know it, inevitable? The poem doesn’t give a simple answer here, it is more of a wake-up call, and it aims to name the unnamable.

Thanks to the great LitPoetry Channel for helping so much with the understanding of The Second Coming in an easy-to-access YouTube video.

The poem ends with an even more frightening cliffhanger. That thing, that beast, isn’t even born yet, it exists, but on another spiritual plane of reality. But has it come into existence in our world in the meantime since 1919? And is this undoing of morality, civilization, and security inevitable? Can we take a stand against it?

W. B. Yeats offers no clue, but if we put this frightening vision into context, we can see it as a manifestation of something known: The eternal battle between light and dark, between good and evil, between the demiurge and the higher realms.

David Lynch offers in his iconic TV series Twin Peaks a comprehensive view of the eternal battle and even a potential interpretation of the coming of the beast into our world.

DAVID LYNCH’s EPISODE EIGHT OF TWIN PEAKS AS THE SECOND COMING.

Episode 8, Twin Peaks The Return is one of the most unusual hours ever aired on TV. The climax of the episode is an over 10-minute explosion of a nuke in 1945 which according to a common interpretation of David Lynch’s rich imagination opened a portal that led an unprecedented evil into the world. It’s Bob (the murderer of Laura Palmer) coming into a bubble and stream of ectoplasm coming into our reality. Later in the episode a sinister Woodsman enters a radio station and kills the host. He takes the microphone and repeats the mantra “This is the water, and this is the well. Drink full, and descend. The horse is the white of the eyes, and dark within.” There are many interpretations of these sinister lines that lead to the radio listeners asleep. One thing is obvious, these events supposed to happen in 1956 refer to the era of Cold War paranoia where there is a sort of peace and security on the surface but a fire burning underneath. Maybe this fire burning for decades, unrecognized, and is now erupting like a volcano. The seismic historical shift which undoubtedly happens now was set up after WWII. Episode 8 of Twin Peaks is clearly about something being born. Today we face the threat of civilisation as we know is about to be destroyed and the promises of the Cold War era on the surface have proven empty. Subsequently, the reality of the contemporary time depicted in Twin Peaks has the quality of a nightmare. As in the real world, everything falls apart.

There is an important distinction here to make: Bob is not the main villain, it is the creature that sent Bob into our world in episode 8, and that creature, JUDY is the powerful evil entity behind the events. Judy seems to be still in that otherworldly realm but poisoning the normal world we live in. It incites chaos, terror, anarchy, and violence everywhere.

We do not know if David Lynch and writer Mark Frost had The Second Coming in mind but there is some potential inspiration here.

Is Judy The Beast?

It would make sense since it has the same qualities.

However, there is a difference between the more depressing outcome of W.B. Yeats’s poem and the events in Twin Peaks, The Return, Episode 8. The explosion of the nuke and Judy bringing Bob into the world alarms the Fireman in the White Lodge, which exemplifies the light, the goodness in a dualistic world. There is a reaction. The answer is the soul of Laura Palmer as a sign of hope and the assault of the dark forces will be not unanswered.

It is not decided who wins but the conclusion is that we are in an ongoing battle between the dark forces and the light.

There is no simple message in the David Lynch series, but it is obviously the task of everyone to stand up to the dark forces, stand up against the beast, the corruption, and the depravity. There is no reason for fatalism because there is also this other side, this white lodge, the light. It is there, but it can’t act alone. It is time to ignite that fire to fight fire with fire in order to stop these destructive forces.

A theme of the movie project The Forest Dark is that these sinister forces can be always found at some notorious places and that the wanderer has to be cautious and not fall for the Maya illusions these forces constantly create. We need to withstand them to battle chaos and evil.

Peter Engelmann, November 27, 2023

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Doppelgängers, Alter Ego And Lost Souls In The Woods

One person at multiple places at the same time. That doesn’t make sense in the natural laws that apply to our physical world. Yet our culture is populated with doubles or Doppelgängers. This applies both for film and literature but also for folk stories and the wide range of true stories, which tell an alleged truth.

The Master Of The Double: David Lynch

The double motive is overtly present in David Lynch movies. However, the use of doubles varies. That is helpful for a distinction between existing ideas of doubles, alter egos, and split souls.
The most overwhelming manifestation of a doppelganger is a person who can appear in different places at the same time. The Mystery Man in Lost Highway tells the main character, Fred, that he can be both at a party and his house at the same time. If it wasn’t the Mystery Man scary in itself, it is this quality which makes him terrifying.
The double, which can appear in different places, is one of the most common motives in horror. It is not a projection, not a fantasy and not a misunderstanding. One of the most horrifying ideas is if you discover that you have a double that does things without your knowledge. The idea of having a dopplegänger that leads an autonomous life is a disturbing revelation.

Apart from that, we have variations of conception of doubles and alter egos. Sometimes, it’s two people, which seem to be one and the same, or persons which resemble each other. There is a mysterious connection between people, we can’t easily grasp. Again, David Lynch’s movies and series are a good source for research: Alice and Renee or Fred and Pete in Lost Highway. Betty and Diane or Rita and Camilla in Mulholland Drive are further examples. Twin Peaks is populated with doubles and Alter Egos. In Twin Peaks – The Return, the world seems crowded with doubles. Kyle McLachlan, has three roles: Agent Cooper, Dougie and the dangerous Mr. C. Whereas Mr. C is a doppelganger of Agent Cooper, the paddington-like Dougie is a tulpa.

Tulpas are thought forms. They are real in a way, but they are not humans. Tulpas can be created. Lynch and writer Mark Frost borrowed that concept from Buddhism, mysticism and theosophy: It means a human form often created through spiritual practice or concentration (Wikipedia) but also unintentionally. The tulpa is more than a spectre, “it is capable of independent action, with a persistent personality and identity” (wiktionary)

According to Tracking the Tulpa (University Of California Press) “the tulpa was first described by Alexandra David-Néel (1868–1969) in Magic and Mystery in Tibet (1929)” The origins are a bit murky and it exists mostly in Western paranormal lore. Not much evidence here is available. If it would be easy to create a doppelganger tulpa we would have seen certainly many criminal cases where a perpetrator used a tulpa as alibi.

The deeper dimension of the Doppelganger motive.

The unexplainable leads us to deep existential and philosophical questions. There is, of course, a psychological dimension here too. There are many doppelganger reports in personal accounts. When people see themselves, it might be an autoscopic hallucination. That might happen in extreme circumstances or as a psychological illness. Maybe the double appears as a sort of warning. Or it could be a split in personality.
In religious or superstitious belief, a doppelganger is a shape-shifter or a trickster demon imitating yourself.
The most fascinating aspect is what it tells us about reality itself. We need to make a choice. Do we stick to the laws of nature and explain it away psychologically, or do we believe in the soul?
If we have a soul, there must be higher realms beyond ordinary reality, and the doppelganger motive has a much deeper meaning.

There could be circumstances where we lose our soul or parts of our soul and the other half of the self tampers around zombie-like.

In my story, The Forest Dark, a person loses their soul deep in the woods. Could it happen in real life?

There is not a big chance to come by with a sort of proof. We have to stick with concepts which are familiar to many people. One idea is the concept of a higher self which is not identical with our physical self or ego. From the hindu philosophy comes the idea of Atman, an universal self, that is “identical with the eternal core of the personality”. In that philosophy the individual soul is the jiva-atman, which is also eternal but trapped in the physical body. The interesting question is does the individual soul recognise the universal atman? The idea of that philosopher is that atman is the opposite of ego, “a false center”, “the product of sensory experiences”. In personal development it might be possible that the individual discovers that other self, that universal self. Why should this not look like a doppelganger experience at first sight for the individual?

The Atman-concept stems from Eastern thought. However, a lot of Eastern philosophy has either counterparts in the West or have influenced Western thought. C.G. Jung borrowed a lot of ideas from Hindu and other Eastern philosophy, for example the higher self.

But the interesting thing here is that we find a split between ego, physical-self and some sort of a higher self in many places in our culture. One idea is the Avatar as seen in the film “Avatar” by James Cameron. The real person is not at the same place as the person which experiences the physical journey.

ALTER EGOS

Similar to that in a way are Alter Egos. Alter Egos are sort of a double existence too. Alter Egos are second personalities within a person. It might be the super hero Superman which is Clark Kent in ordinary lives but there are endless possibilities for Alter Egos. The Alter Ego can become “another self” which is separated from the person. That idea become popular in the 18 century with Anton Mesmer’s hypnosis experiments. He claimed he can separate a person’s alter ego. In literature “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” explored the concept of the ego and it is a popular idea til today.

There is nothing supernatural in the concept unless we introduce the idea of the multiverse or higher dimensions. In a more multi dimensional world we would find alternative versions of ourselves leading an independent existence on their own. An idea which was explored in the Star Trek Trek: Discovery.

Thus it might not take too much imagination that doppelgängers as seen in the David Lynch series have some serious background. It might be a glitch in reality or a strange personal development or even more sinister ideas that a doppelgänger can be created.

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Magic Is Strong In The Forest

The forest as a magic realm is a prominent trope in almost any fantasy story and fairy tale. It’s sometimes a stereotype. The forest stands for the otherworld. Sometimes the heroes of the story want to reconnect to this otherworld. The forest is the place where reconnection seems possible. In some occasions the heroes perform rituals or they use psychoactive substances. Magic mushrooms are popular devices to reconnect or to experience deeper and spiritual dimensions of reality. The outcome is in certain cases unpredictable and a desperate attempt to recover what was lost:

In fantasy men is often a threat to the magic realm of the forest. Men destroy the forest. Men destroy the deeper, original magical dimension of reality. Often there is a fight between the original inhabitants, the fairies, the cunning people, the secret commonwealth and men. In fantasy often men is stronger. But the secret commonwealth, the little people, are going underground. Some say they return as aliens in common Ufo folklore. Instead of living in harmony with the higher realms men lives in a soulless technocratic world but which is haunted in certain moments.

There is an excellent overview in the article Where The Magic Things are: Forst in Fantasy Literature by Giovanna CHINELLATO, Sao Paulo/SP/ Brasil. She takes examples from works by J.R.R. Tolkien, Peter Beagle, Ursula K. Le Guin, George Martin, Patrick Rothfuss. The archetype of the magical forest was laid however much earlier in the myths of mankind, for example Gilgamesh and Volsunga saga.

Fantasy and Forest Horror

In forest horror the premise is not entirely different. However, the forces of nature can be overwhelming for men. The otherworld is ambiguous. The forest is a dangerous place. Attempts to connect with the spiritual realm or the elder gods end up in madness or even death. In the end the hero of the story can be another mysterious missing case, wandering around aimlessly forever as a lost soul in the forest.

The magical forest in horror is the forest dark. Nevertheless fantasy, supernatural horror and true stories or real accounts share a common concept: The forest as a living being. The concept bears some similarities with the Anima Mundi, the world soul: The idea of an intelligible entity, the inter-connection between all things, its omni-presence. This world soul can normally not seen in itself. It manifests in visionary experience and even ontological shock,

Plato speaks about the Anima Mundi as: “Thus, then, in accordance with the likely account, we must declare that this Cosmos has verily come into existence as a Living Creature endowed with soul and reason […] a Living Creature, one and visible, containing within itself all the living creatures which are by nature akin to itself”. This is, of course, encompassing everything, not only nature or the forest. But the forest is often the model. And it is in the forest the characters in a story seek unity, reconnection. In Forest Horror this can go terribly wrong.

In Forest Horror we often meet a truth-seeker, a hippie, a shaman, often a HERMIT seeking closeness with nature. That character is or pretends to be in contact with the forest, or the lord of the forest (often the magic soul of the forest is becoming a deity, for example the Celtic CERNUNNOS). The character has been for too long in the forest and is often a dangerous madman himself. Some screenplays use this constellation as dramaturgical trick, because then you don’t need to introduce some “forest demon” or similar things. (I make no exception from the rule with my own project here).

The more important point is that the truth seeking hermit gone mad presents a mirror image of the more optimist quest in fantasy stories. Giovanna Chinellato writes: “Given the, at least ideological, human-nature distancing and antagonism, characteristic of civilization (HARRISON, 2009), and considering that fantasy can have a recovery function (TOLKIEN, 2009), these fantastic forests can help humankind marvel at and reconnect with nature, possibly aiding in the development of a new and much necessary environmental awareness”.

Horror does not have that recovery function. It has a more cathartic function. It helps us to come to terms with realities. However, there is still a similarity between fantasy and horror: If nature is experienced as hostile it might be just a mirror or a consequence of man’s own wrong doing. In the forest dark we often meet our own darkness and our own inner demons.

How to express forest magic?

Either you look how to express the magic soul of the forest because you really believe in it or you need it for a story it always comes down to the same problem: We, indeed, might feel there is truth in it. However how do we show it? Unseen demonic force? Or positive magical vision? There are lot of temptations particularly in the era of digital effects. The problem is not, is it “good” or “bad, the problem is, does it feel right? This is perhaps a more challenging problem in horror rather than in fantasy.