URIZEN'S BIBLE

Wikipedia Commons
Book of Urizen
Copy A, Plate 8

 

Although Blake found it necessary to create his own system, he did not intend that his system be imposed on anyone else. His problem with the way the orthodox used the Bible was that they meant for it to be read in a uniform way. The established church and its priests, Blake represented by Urizen, and its Bible by Urizen's book of history and laws. But Urizen's book was not a different book, it was a different way of reading the same book.

"Both read the Bible day & night
But thou readst black where I read white"

If the Bible is read as poetry, it is not a book of rules but a book that stimulates the imagination and opens the mind to vision. Urizen intended his book to be used to control the unruly, to oppress the poor and to promise rewards for obedience. Such a reading of the Bible could only result if mercy were suppressed, conformity were enforced, threats were implicit, and love were narrowly defined.

Although Urizen was a complex character as Blake presented him, in simplest terms he was the reasoning faculty of the mind. He did not have empathy because he felt no emotions, he did not write poetry because every term had only one meaning, he did not listen to other points of view because he knew his own righteousness. His system was the only system, and he intended to use it to dominate the weak and compliant. Blake saw the problem with Urizen's book not with the content only, but with the 'iron pen' with which it had been written.   

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Everlasting Gospel, (E 524)
"The Vision of Christ that thou dost see
Is my Visions Greatest Enemy
Thine has a great hook nose like thine
Mine has a snub nose like to mine
Thine is the Friend of All Mankind    
Mine speaks in parables to the Blind
Thine loves the same world that mine hates
Thy Heaven doors are my Hell Gates   
Socrates taught what Melitus
Loathd as a Nations bitterest Curse    
And Caiphas was in his own Mind
A benefactor of Mankind
Both read the Bible day & night
But thou readst black where I read white"

Four Zoas, Night VII. Page 79, (E355)
"But Urizen remitted not their labours upon his rock
PAGE 80
And Urizen Read in his book of brass in sounding tones    

Listen O Daughters to my voice Listen to the Words of Wisdom
So shall ye govern over all let Moral Duty tune your tongue  
But be your hearts harder than the nether millstone
To bring the shadow of Enitharmon beneath our wondrous tree   
That Los may Evaporate like smoke & be no more
Draw down Enitharmon to the Spectre of Urthona
And let him have dominion over Los the terrible shade

Compell the poor to live upon a Crust of bread by soft mild arts
Smile when they frown frown when they smile & when a man looks  pale
With labour & abstinence say he looks healthy & happy
And when his children Sicken let them die there are enough
Born even too many & our Earth will be overrun
Without these arts If you would make the poor live with temper
With pomp give every crust of bread you give with gracious cunning 
Magnify small gifts reduce the man to want a gift & then give with pomp  
Say he smiles if you hear him sigh If pale say he is ruddy
Preach temperance   say he is overgorgd & drowns his wit
In strong drink tho you know that bread & water are all
He can afford   Flatter his wife pity his children till we can   

Reduce all to our will as spaniels are taught with art
Lo how the heart & brain are formed in the breeding womb
Of Enitharmon how it buds with life & forms the bones
The little heart the liver & the red blood in its labyrinths"

Four Zoas, Night VII. Page 38, (E 326)
[Ahania to Urizen}
"O Prince the Eternal One hath set thee leader of his hosts
PAGE 39 
Leave all futurity to him Resume thy fields of Light      
Why didst thou listen to the voice of Luvah that dread morn
To give the immortal steeds of light to his deceitful hands
No longer now obedient to thy will thou art compell'd
To forge the curbs of iron & brass to build the iron mangers
To feed them with intoxication from the wine presses of Luvah
Till the Divine Vision & Fruition is quite obliterated
They call thy lions to the fields of blood, they rowze thy tygers
Out of the halls of justice, till these dens thy wisdom framd
Golden & beautiful but O how unlike those sweet fields of bliss  
Where liberty was justice & eternal science was mercy
Then O my dear lord listen to Ahania, listen to the vision
The vision of Ahania in the slumbers of Urizen
When Urizen slept in the porch & the Ancient Man was smitten"

Four Zoas, Night VI, Page 71, (E 348)
"But still his books he bore in his strong hands & his iron pen   
For when he died they lay beside his grave & when he rose
He siezd them with a gloomy smile for wrapd in his death clothes
He hid them when he slept in death when he revivd the clothes
Were rotted by the winds the books remaind still unconsumd
Still to be written & interleavd with brass & iron & gold 
Time after time for such a journey none but iron pens           
Can write And adamantine leaves recieve nor can the man who goes
PAGE 72 
The journey obstinate refuse to write time after time"