ZOES PERSONIFIED

Blake Archive

Fitzwilliam Museum

Book of Urizen 

Plate 24

If we enter into Blake's divisions of the human psyche, they take on lives of their own. Lets look within at the fallen aspects of the Zoas which we can identify within ourselves. Do we recognize Orc as the fiery agent of change which incessantly struggles of break the chains of conformity to the status quo? Can we see Satan within our brains building structures to restrict and confine us in order to prevent us from fulfilling our potential for development? Is there a Los in us who accepts the task of awaking the sleeping imagination through which we can shed the confines of time and space? And can we escape from the idea that the body is the real and that the spirit is the transitory, which prevents us from reentering Eden?  

Our undisclosed lives are the lives of the Zoas - our emotions: Luvah, our reasoning: Urizen, our intuition: Urthona, our senses: Tharmas. Self knowledge can calm the battles that rage within.

Jerusalem, Plate 38 [43], (E 184)
"They saw their Wheels rising up poisonous against Albion
Urizen, cold & scientific: Luvah, pitying & weeping
Tharmas, indolent & sullen: Urthona, doubting & despairing
Victims to one another & dreadfully plotting against each other
To prevent Albion walking about in the Four Complexions." 

Element         Eternal Name       Worldly Name

Fire                Luvah                    Orc

Air                  Urizen                   Satan

Earth              Urthona                Los

Water             Tharmas              Cherub with Flaming Sword           

Milton, Plate 13, (E 158)  

"Shadowy to those who dwell not in them, meer possibilities:
But to those who enter into them they seem the only substances   
For every thing exists & not one sigh nor smile nor tear,
Plate 14
One hair nor particle of dust, not one can pass away.

He views the Cherub at the Tree of Life, also the Serpent,
Orc the first born coild in the south: the Dragon Urizen:
Tharmas the Vegetated Tongue even the Devouring Tongue:
A threefold region, a false brain: a false heart:                
And false bowels: altogether composing the False Tongue,
Beneath Beulah: as a watry flame revolving every way
And as dark roots and stems: a Forest of affliction, growing
In seas of sorrow."

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 14, (E 39)

   "The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire
at the  end of six thousand years is true. as I have heard from
Hell.
   For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to 
leave his guard at the tree of life, and when he does, the whole 
creation will be consumed, and appear infinite. and holy whereas
it now  appears finite & corrupt." 

Genesis 1

[23] Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
[24] So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

Milton, Plate 39 [45, (E 158)

"loud Satan thunderd on the stormy Sea
Circling Albions Cliffs in which the Four-fold World resides     
Tho seen in fallacy outside: a fallacy of Satans Churches
Plate 40 [46]
Before Ololon Milton stood & percievd the Eternal Form
Of that mild Vision; wondrous were their acts by me unknown
Except remotely; and I heard Ololon say to Milton

I see thee strive upon the Brooks of Arnon. there a dread
And awful Man I see, oercoverd with the mantle of years.   
I behold Los & Urizen. I behold Orc & Tharmas;
The Four Zoa's of Albion & thy Spirit with them striving
In Self annihilation giving thy life to thy enemies
Are those who contemn Religion & seek to annihilate it
Become in their Feminine portions the causes & promoters       
Of these Religions, how is this thing? this Newtonian Phantasm
This Voltaire & Rousseau: this Hume & Gibbon & Bolingbroke
This Natural Religion! this impossible absurdity"

Wikipedia Commons
Illustrations for Paradise Lost
Butts Set, Picture 12