William Blakes's Four Zoas

William Blake's "egg" picture divides into four "castles" - a quaternity. As said below, these are the "personality types" - I told my Israeli friend that the four "houses" of aeon Pisces - Orthodox, Islam, Catholic, Protestant should be considered the four "types." Jerusalem, Temple Mount, being the egg. This is the core diagram of all cosmic religion.

- from Jon Green's site:


"There are four great ‘daimons’ or god-figures who appear in much of his major work, called the Four Zoas. Occasionally the names change but the meaning is generally clear. They correspond to those divisions of psychological functioning described by Jung. Los or Urthona (corresponding to Intuition) is the Spirit of Prophecy, the divine vision, a figure similar to the classical Phoebus Apollo. The name possibly derives from Sol (sun) spelled backwards, or from ‘earth-owner’. Urizen (corresponding to Thinking) and perhaps derived from ‘your reason’ is the Spirit of Thought, Eternal Mind; his ‘steeds’ are thoughts. The silver mountains of Urizen are where wisdom dwelt. He is also a law giver, and in some ways similar to Zeus. Luvah or Orc (corresponding to Feeling) is Prince of Love, Eros, Eternal Youth , sometimes called Red Orc -- the fiery boy. The names derive possibly from ‘lover’ or ‘hawk of May’. Tharmas (corresponding to Sensation) represents the corporeal Waters of Matter, the fluid matrix of form. He appears as a kind of great demon of the waters, a Neptune or Poseidon figure."

Note that these four states also correspond to the four worlds of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and to the four elements :

Atziluth (Emanation) Fire Intuition The Self
Briah (Creation) Air Thinking Language, Abstraction, Reason
Yetzirah (Formation) Water Feeling Emotions, Drives, Feeling
Assiah (Action) Earth Sensation Perception, Imagination, Instinct, Reproduction

In Diana Wynne Jones/Mayazaki's great work "Howl's Moving Castle" Howl has a dial by his door which he can turn to any of the four quaters; the four together forming Castle:



Likewise Jung's four personality types accessed by The Trickster with lantern:



Which is pretty much the same as the Mandala of Vajrabhairava:



And in the Christian realm the cross (two sticks; fire in the Greek) forms the four castles of the universe with the Christ (the egg) in center/Self holding them together and apart - quite literally nailing the four corners of the universe together. The spear indicates the inward action of the introvert/shaman of the inner world as spear in hand of a soldier indicates guide to outer world. This one by Fra Angelica: