A layperson’s study of William Blake and other reflections….
The darkness of our world
Is not knowing and understanding;
Light can only come, when we
Make it our business to find it.
Socrates ca. 470-399 B.C.
Astraea’s hoped-for return was referred to in a phrase from Virgil’s Eclogue IV: “Iam redit et virgo, redeunt Saturnia Regna” (Astraea returns, returns old Saturn’s reign.)
The above image is the star goddess. She is part of the earth and the sky. She is like many images of justice, Aquarius and the golden stars of the night sky. I find she is an archaic image that echoes of a Golden Age. If you do much reading of myths or ancient stories, you’ll find the Golden Age mentioned there. Astraea is the bright star that reveals our insight into the Golden Age. She is needed in helping to restore our “universal humanity.” Of brighter days ahead in the dark times we face.
As Virgil says,
“Astraea returns, returns old Saturn’s reign”
And maybe she does. Like a spiral the same and something different. The continuity of the stars and planets in the cosmos reflect in our watery psyche. If we become aware of this, very possibly, hopefully and surely, the two circles of psyche and cosmos meet within us. We will find the bright star there.
“In his late works, he embodied these and other ills in the nightmare ridden figure of the cosmic giant Albion, or universal humanity, who has fallen into deadly sleep of mundane existence. In humanity’s coma, the divine is a remote and forbidding sky-god: nature a sterile heap of atoms, lovers and family members, enemies; and one’s own innermost being, an unrecognized alien.” ~Blake’s Poetry & Designs ` A Norton Critical Edition.
“A vision of the Last Judgement. It is an endeavor to restore what the ancients call the Golden Age.”
(pg. 434)
Albion Rose!!
Here Albion as shown as a joyful and vigorous young man freeing himself from the shackles of materialism. In Blake’s world view, Albion could still be saved by the triumph of individual liberty, imagination and spirituality over social, political and religious oppression.
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