RED ORC

New York Public Library

Europe

Plate 14

This is the final plate of Europe showing the flames of Orc behind Los who is rescuing his daughters from the conflagration.

Milton Percival, on page 210 of William Blake's Circle of Destiny states:

"A cold and selfish world, without the principal of change, is the goal of Urizen's endeavor.

The fire force which prevents this eventuality is personified in Orc...Under the repression of a religion of rationalism, such as the unregenerate Los creates, the emotions become a dark and tormenting fire with both the will and the power to destroy the forces that harass them. Luvah appears in the fiery form of Orc. With his birth the Generative world begins - the Generative world out of which regeneration is to come...Every time a religion, a philosophy, or a created form of any sort is demolished, human passion, as symbolized by Orc, provides the destructive power...

As the principle of revolt in the fallen world, Orc is the 'evil' of the orthodox, struggling with the passivity and the negation which they impose...In him is all the anguish of self-righteous man in a struggle with his own self-righteousness. His is the torment of a man who believes himself a sinner and his God the principle of wrath against which he revolts, only to see himself in his revolt as a blasphemer against his God. He is that something in man which endures the torment, the cause of which he cannot define because it is hidden deep within himself."

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Europe, Plate 14, (E 66)

"Arise and please the horrent fiend with your melodious songs.
Still all your thunders golden hoofd, & bind your horses black.
Orc! smile upon my children!
Smile son of my afflictions.                                     
Arise O Orc and give our mountains joy of thy red light.

She ceas'd, for All were forth at sport beneath the solemn moon 
Waking the stars of Urizen with their immortal songs,
That nature felt thro' all her pores the enormous revelry,
Till morning ope'd the eastern gate.                             
Then every one fled to his station, & Enitharmon wept.

But terrible Orc, when he beheld the morning in the east,
Plate 15
Shot from the heights of Enitharmon;                
And in the vineyards of red France appear'd the light of his  fury.

The sun glow'd fiery red!
The furious terrors flew around!
On golden chariots raging, with red wheels dropping with blood;  
The Lions lash their wrathful tails!
The Tigers couch upon the prey & suck the ruddy tide:
And Enitharmon groans & cries in anguish and dismay.

Then Los arose his head he reard in snaky thunders clad:
And with a cry that shook all nature to the utmost pole,         
Call'd all his sons to the strife of blood.
                 FINIS"