Macbeth sees Banquo’s Ghost sitting in his chair at the banquet. This drives him back to the witches, who show him three Apparitions that give him three riddling oracles that, once again, he interprets according to what he wants to hear.

Immediately after the horrific murder of Duncan, the startlingly incongruous monologue of the porter too drunk to open the gate. The psychological closeness of terror and laughter. Macbeth hires three murderers, who kill Banquo, but Fleance escapes.

Lady Macbeth goads her husband, telling him to be a man. The theme of being an “instrument.” Duncan and company are put up for the night in Macbeth’s Dunsinane. Murder in the middle of the night.

The witches and their prophecies to both Macbeth and Banquo. Thematic patterns: things occur in 3’s; the word “equivocal.” Duncan declares his son Malcolm heir to the throne, and Macbeth decides upon murder.

Macbeth (1606) is a play about real Scottish history, but is also a drama of the mind, clearly written with James I in mind, who was both Scottish and obsessed with witches. The opening scenes alternate between political and military doings and the dark Otherworld of the blasted heath, with the three witches.

Albion redeemed from his fall into illusion and nihilistic despair by the work of Los. The renunciation of the natural self and “natural religion” for the true Christianity of the imagination. Against illusion, the arts and sciences. Against vengeance and love of war, the forgiveness of sins.

Blake’s culminating epic, on the work of Los, the imagination, to redeem the fall of Albion, the universal divine-human figure. Chapter 1 of 4: the great debate of Los with the Spectre of Urthona, the selfish and despairing part of all of us. The struggle of Los to keep faith in a time of despair like our own has great dramatic power, as it is a struggle within every person.

Milton, inspired by the Bard’s Song, returns and enters Blake, who is thereby united to Los, the imagination, resulting in a vision of nature redeemed by imagination. Then Milton confronts his Selfhood and renounces it, reconciling with his Emanation Ololon, a kind of renewed marriage witnessed by the married couple William and Catherine Blake in their garden.

We begin an overview in four podcasts of Blake’s two final and definitive poems, Milton and Jerusalem. Milton is in two books. In the first, Milton returns to the fallen world to achieve the clarified vision that eluded him in Paradise Lost. He wrestles with Urizen, who tries to oppose him, and enters Blake’s left foot to inspire him.

The lowest point: Orc crucified as serpent by Vala, Urizen Wars with Los, the hermaphroditic form of Satan/Rahab is revealed. But Los, the Spectre of Urthona, and Enitharmon unite to create forms for the Spectres. Night the 9th: the apocalypse.