Jacob's Dream

An image from the book of Genesis, in which Jacob is shown a ladder that stretches between heaven and earth. As art critic Anthony Blunt points out, Blake’s version of the incident uses a spiraling staircase rather than a ladder to represent the flight to heaven. Furthermore, the stairs seem filled with recognizably human women and men rather than angels, as in other previous descriptions. For Blake, the divine realm could be accessed readily on Earth via the imagination. He represents divinity not as an exclusive category available only to those who live a life of fanatical purity, but rather as an essential aspect of human existence.