Orc (Blake)

In Blake's illuminated book America a Prophecy, Orc is described by his mythic opponent, "Albion's Angel" as the "Lover of Wild Rebellion, and transgressor of God's Law".

Orcus is also the Latin word for Hell, and Orc is presented as a rebellious, Luciferian character.

In the Four Zoas, the children of Los represent a just form of wrath, pity, frustrated desire and logic, which serve as an analysis of Orc's being.

Orc's creation was based on the split between Los and Enitharmon, and he transformed from a worm into the form of a serpent.

[4] Orc is a force of revolution, revival, and of passion who is the polar opposite to Urizen, the cruel and tyrannous god.

The second phase is where Urizen takes over the fallen world, which is represented by the Enlightenment in the seventh cycle.

[5] The character Orc is connected to the Biblical serpent, the image of being hanged on a dead tree, and to the sun.

Likewise, the tree image is similar to Odin's being speared and hanged upon a gallows-tree as a sacrifice.

Like Jesus, Orc is also born around the winter solstice, a time when the sun is unable to warm the cold earth.

Likewise, Blake believed that the imagination, represented by Orc, was purely mental and could not have the same form as a physical thing.

In Blake's version, the true Satan was God, who created the physical reality, and the Satan/Orc figure represents the human desire which is transformed into accepting of law and reason.

[14] Later in Vala, Orc describes the divided aspects of the soul, which, in Blake's mythological system, God has a twofold essence that is capable of good and evil.

[16] In The Four Zoas this is overridden: there the parents produce the four sons Rintrah, Palamabron, Bromion and Theotormon.

In Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982), one of the lines by Roy Batty is a misquote of Blake's poem: "Fiery the angels fell; deep thunder rolled around their shores; burning with the fires of Orc".