Urizen
He is usually depicted as a bearded old man; he sometimes bears architect's tools, to create and constrain the universe; or nets, with which he ensnares people in webs of law and conventional society.
In Blake's reworking of his mythic system, Urizen is one of the four Zoas that result from the division of the primordial man, Albion, and he continues to represent reason.
He believes himself holy and he sets about establishing various sins in a book of brass that serves as a combination of various laws as discovered by Newton, given to Moses, and the general concept of deism, which force uniformity upon mankind.
Eventually, Urizen is able to destroy his rebellious son and impose laws upon the Israelites in the form of the Ten Commandments.
He was the entity created when a voice said that light should be born, and he was the fourth child of the characters Albion and Vala.
After his fall, Urizen set about creating the material world and his jealousy of mankind brought forth both Wrath and Justice.
After setting to take over Imagination, Luvah's stealing of the horses, which represented instruction, showed how emotion could dominate over reason.
[6] Additionally, these works describe how Newtonian reason and the enlightenment view of the universe traps the imagination.
Together, they also organize the waters of Generation, they are the creators of the Bread of Sorrow, and read from the Book of Iron.
His sons are differently organised, in different poems: as Thiriel, Utha, Grodna, Fuzon, aligned with the four classical elements; or as twelve, aligned with the signs of the Zodiac, and builders of the Mundane Shell and seek to keep mankind from falling.
During the Last Judgment, the sons get rid of their weapons and celebrate Urizen's return to the plow, and they join together for the harvest.
The Book of Brass sets forth Urizen's social beliefs that seek to remove all pain and instill peace under one rule.
The attempt to force love through law encouraged the Eternals to put forth the Seven Deadly Sins that Urizen hoped to prevent.
The Book of Iron was lost in the Tree of Mystery, and represents how Urizen can create wars but cannot control them.
[9] The character Urizen is first directly mentioned in Blake's "A Song of Liberty" (1793) where he is first described in his dispute with Orc.
He is mentioned later that year in Europe a Prophecy and it is in the work that Urizen is freed from his bounds and he opens the Book of Brass in response to the American revolution.
Urizen appears in Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion in a form similar to the previous works.
[17] Urizen has clear similarities with the creature called the Demiurge by Gnostic sects, who is likewise largely derived of the Old Testament god (more specifically, like Blake's Urizen, the demiurge is a radical remodelling of that figure achieved by expanding that figure's original contextual setting, or by removing him to one that is almost completely new).
