Los Entering the Grave

In this image, the frontispiece of Blake's poem 'Jerusalem,' we see this figure cautiously entering a door, carrying a spiritual orb for illumination. Los appears in William Blake's poetic mythology as a symbol of human dynamism and desire - Blake sometimes compared him to Napoleon, sometimes to Jesus Christ. Los here might represent a reader picking up the book and exploring the caves inside. Whereas we would usually imagine a book to give us a new sense of enlightenment, rather than pitch darkness, Tristram Connolly suggests that Los's illuminated sphere represents the reader's understanding and sense of vision; by entering the book, we are given a new arena in which to test out this understanding, rather than a new dogmatic belief that fixes the universe in place. This would be in tune with the wider project of the poem 'Jerusalem,' which ends with an enormous vision of God's Holy City being founded within the realm of Earth itself, populated by humans who are made divine by their individual artistry, rather than their adherence to a legislative religious doctrine: 'I know of no other Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of body & mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination.' - Jerusalem, Plate 77