Chris Villemarette
Dr. Guernsey-Shaw
English 351
24 April 2001
Atemporal Metaphors: Jungian Archetypes in "The Book of Urizen"

One approach to analyzing William Blake's "The Book of Urizen" is through the language of the psychologist Carl Gustav Jung.  Jung's archetypes can be related to the characters within the poem and can bring about greater understanding of the work.  Within "The Book of Urizen," the characters represent a possible map of the human psyche and the creation of unconscious and conscious minds, as well as other features of Jung's concept of psyche.  Struggles between collective and individual consciousness and between reason and imagination are investigated.  One can also read the poem as a creation story of the human psyche and its spirit of rebellion in taking control of its own will.  Therefore, "The Book of Urizen" provides a model of the creation of both civilization and the psyche that can be explained through Jungian archetypes representing forces of oppression and rebellion, as well as division and wholeness.
"The Book of Urizen" is essentially the creation story in Blake's mythology, in which Urizen is the Creator sent into the shadows of reality.  Other characters include the Eternals, Los, Enitharmon, and Orc, as well as the minor characters Thiriel, Utha, Grodna, and Fuzon, representing the four elements: air, water, earth, and fire, respectively.  The characters in these poems are the gods of Blake's complex mythology.  According to Emily S. Hamblen, "The Book of Urizen" is a work featuring archetypes; however, it also contains elements of the beginnings of human history itself (298).  The Eternals, as older, higher gods, reject Urizen for his assumption of power.  Los is the counterpart to Urizen, who is born around him, encircling him and then breaking away.  Enitharmon is the female counterpart to Los, who splits from him.  Orc is the child of Los and Enitharmon.  Understanding of "The Book of Urizen" as a creation story is essential for further interpretation of Blake's other prophetic works.  
The poem deals with the disintegration of wholeness and a fall from a higher state of consciousness.  A parallel exists between the poem as a creation story and the creation story of the ancient Gnostics.  According to Denis Saurat, author of Blake and Modern Thought, the Gnostics believed that the creator of the physical world was a tyrant who assumed his position as the only god to rule over his creation.  The creator in Blake's mythology, Urizen, then parallels the creator of the Gnostic belief system.  Urizen's dogma reflects the dogma of the Gnostic creator, the God of the Old Testament, which further implicates that the "moral rules prevailing in our society are bad" (Saurat 7-9).  J. Bronowski also cites the Gnostics as an inspiration to Blake for his rejection of religion and law in his book William Blake and the Age of Revolution (174).  Denis Saurat contends that "The Book of Urizen" is the tale of a rebel god that creates laws for his world that only cause the spiritual fall of those subjugated to the laws (14-15).  Urizen's formation of law is symbolic of the laws that are assumed and passed along in civilization from generation to generation.  The rules ultimately cause problems because they cannot be followed. Victor N. Paananen, in his entry on William Blake in Twayne's English Authors, notes that "The Book of Urizen" is "a work that is concerned most directly with the problem of the limits that we place on our perception in our acceptance of the natural world" (Chapter 2).  Paananen states that the psychology of the poem is that humanity makes the fall of Urizen whenever it sees the world without imagination, which is, for Blake, the final word on truth for the individual (Chapter 2).  In this way, the poem reflects the ideals of the Gnostics, who sought religious truth from within themselves.
Carl Jung also had an affinity for the Gnostics, especially for their concept of "Gnosis."
In The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, Stephan A Hoeller explains Jung's view of Gnosticism as an appreciation for the Gnostics' mythology as a system which reflects Jung's view of the human psyche (20-22).  "Gnosis" itself is defined by Hoeller as "a knowledge of the heart directed toward the inmost core of the human psyche and having as its objective the essential transformation of the psyche" (33).  He compares Jung and the Gnostics as both having the realization that a particular religious system itself is simply a metaphor for higher truths about humanity, or in Jungian terms, archetypes in the collective unconscious (Hoeller 34-35).  Jung's concept of Gnosis is what Hoeller describes as "New Gnosticism," which holds that Gnosis does not depend on a specific system, or dogma, but must simply use symbols to achieve a higher understanding of selfhood (34-35).  "The Book of Urizen" also holds this ideal in its repudiation of moral laws.  According to Robert H. Hopcke, in his book A Guided Tour of the Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Jung asserts that religion should be a more like an attitude than a set of specific beliefs (67).  Jung's analytic theory depends highly on a sense of "wholeness" within the human psyche, which he calls "individuation," and wholeness is a central theme throughout "The Book of Urizen" as well (Hoeller 36-37).  In addition, Jung held that moral systems might be a way to achieve obedience, but not a wholeness of being.  
William Blake shows a similar belief system in "The Book of "Urizen."  In the book Blake: A Psychological Study, W.P. Wittcut maintains that "The great value of Blake's poetry is that it provides a kind of outline of the unconscious mind…In exploring the mythological world of Blake, we are really exploring out own minds" (18).  Wittcut describes Blake as an "intuitive introvert," meaning that he "sees the archetypes of the unconscious clearly and vividly in his mind's eye" (23).  Blake stresses the importance of being able to discern the meanings of the symbols of our unconscious, which is also one of Jung's goals in his analytic theory.  The archetypes in the collective unconscious are the source of Blake's visions.  The characters in the poem are archetypes for human "modes of perception" (Paananen Chapter 2).  To fully grasp the relation between the characters and the human mind, the actions and attributes of the characters must be explored.
In the Preludium to the poem, the persona tells of Eternals who are dictating to him "dark visions of torment," which entail the creation story of Blake's rich mythology (line 7).  In the book Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the Culture of Radicalism in the 1790s, John Mee points out that the Preludium reveals "The Book of Urizen" as an alternative take on Genesis, in which Blake mentions that the "void" is something created, as opposed to the original state of the universe, which shows that the Eternals preceded the God of Genesis (173-174).  The Eternals from which the persona has received his vision represent the consciousness that existed before human consciousness, and from which human consciousness emanated.  John Mee describes them as "communitarian" (174).  The idea of Urizen's separation can be further explored through Jungian terminology.
Urizen is the force breaking away from the collective to create the individual human psyche. Peter Otto describes this event in terms of withdrawal from a relationship founded in Eternity (366-367).  Otto's view is that in Eternity, rather than time and space, reality is based on relationships.  For example, Urizen's abandonment of the Eternals does not take place in a world of direct cause and effect, as ours, but in a world in which a call's "significance depends on its response" (368).  Similarly, in Jungian terms, the unconscious mind communicates with the conscious mind through archetypes and symbols that do not necessarily correlate with the rules of causality.  Jung's name for the "acausal connecting principle" is "synchronicity," which is basically defined as a group of events that become meaningful through their relation to each other (Hopcke 71-72).  Therefore, Eternity becomes a symbol for the union of conscious and unconscious minds in which they not only able to communicate directly, but are able to effect change through will.  Urizen's break is symbolic of the break between conscious and unconscious minds.  Peter Otto identifies Urizen's name with the word "horizon," which is a line that separates the Eternal world from Urizen's world (369).  Otto believes that the split affects both Urizen and the Eternals' actions throughout the rest of the poem (367-371).  After the division that Urizen initiates, he then begins to further divide by imposing his will onto his world.
Urizen makes the mistake of seeking to solidify his limited conception of truth into law, and then religion.  Blake believes that religious texts should be read metaphorically, rather than literally; in addition, he did not see the need for only one religious text to be the final authority (Mee 182-183).  The Eternals "spurn'd back his religion" because it blinds and separates humanity and Urizen creates the urge to gain control over other consciousness.  Urizen's place is "shadowy," which suggests the unconscious mind; however, the idea of darkness is used in an overtly negative way.  Urizen is the creator of the human mind that is disconnected from the wisdom of the Eternals, and that is why the Eternals gave him a place that is "solitary" (Blake line 4).  He is the corrupted human will, which deviates from the will of the Eternals.  The persona also describes Urizen as a "Priest," which can be historically interpreted as the emergence of a priest class that has separated itself from the rest of the group and "assum'd power" over them with dogma.  Individual humans are no longer able to directly communicate with that which is eternal (Blake line 1).  Inequality and bondage arise due to Urizen.  As the Preludium indicates, the following poem is to be the story of the unfolding of the human psyche and civilization and the struggles of power in both the internal and external worlds of human existence.
Understanding Blake's mythology requires an analysis of Urizen’'s relation to Jung's archetypes.  Archetypes are essential to the concept of the collective unconscious, as they are the universal patterns that the collective unconscious contains for all people according to Robert H. Hopcke (13).  Urizen is described with shadow imagery, and the shadow is an important archetype in Jungian psychology.  The shadow represents those things that reside in the unconscious mind which are undesired and do not promote wholeness (Hopcke 81-82).  These undesired feelings are a reflection of what humans consider evil, according to Jung (Hopcke 83-84).  Jung refers to a method of receiving information from the unconscious, which could be compared to Gnosis, as "active imagination," which is a concept explored throughout the poem, as active imagination is a way for the unconscious and conscious minds to communicate (Hopcke 33).  Still, the character of Urizen can be explored through other archetypes. 	 
	Urizen is seen as both God of the Old Testament in his prescription of laws, but also as Satan, the "Accuser," which can be likened not only to state religion, but also to the state itself (Mee 178).  "The Book of Urizen" is not meant to rewrite the Bible, but rather to parody it (Mee 180).	Emily S. Hamblen, in her book On the Minor Prophecies of William Blake, offers the explanation that Urizen's assumption of power causes the Eternals to give him his own place that becomes the physical world as we know it (261).  Blake uses his "Divine Imagination" to perceive the wisdom of the Eternals, as he suggests to the rest of humanity by demonizing the power of Urizen (Hamblen 261-262).  The concept of Eternity itself represents a wholeness, or unity that is broken by Urizen.  Hamblen puts forth the idea that Urizen's separation mimes the separation of man from nature, as humanity tries to control nature; however, the path of humanity can only be altered through the personal will, and not through the will of Urizen (263).  Urizen's name is derived from the Greek word "ourizo," which means to "bound" or "limit" (Hamblen 269).  He lives up to his name by being a constant source of separation throughout the poem.
In Chapter I, Urizen is described as a power that has "risen," further indicating his separation from the wisdom of the Eternals.  He has "divided," which is his role.  He sees that power is gained by separating (I. 2-9). Although he creates a world, he is essentially uncreative, as he makes solid the physical and metaphysical world (Paananen Chapter 2).  After leaving the Eternals, Urizen became occupied with the creation of his world, unaware of the Eternals watching over him.  His world is stormy with chaos.  He is similar to the concept in Jungian psychology of the ego that identifies itself with the Hero archetype.  The Hero is the one who delves into the shadowy depths to fight evil; however, the when the ego gets involved, many problems occur, as is shown by Urizen's actions throughout the poem (Hopcke 113-114).  He has noble intentions, but they only lead to mental slavery.
He seeks to create a world of "joy without pain."  In this way, he is not evil, but simply a reflection of the human ego that cannot grasp why good cannot exist without evil (Hamblen 270).  Urizen creates first with fire, which makes an empty space for the world to exist.  The notion of self appears, and then wind, water and earth appear.  He sees that they are sinful.  They are the authors of the collective unconscious, and Urizen sees that their actions are a uniting principle for humanity, which is against his nature.  John Mee points out that Urizen is not like the God of the Old Testament in that he does not first see his creation as good, but as sinful and evil (186-187), which is more like the God that sees imperfection in the fact that Adam is alone.  Urizen forges his book of laws for his creations.  His laws are noble in his view; however, he makes them as laws that cannot be followed due to the imperfection of his world.  He seeks to enforce his impossible laws as the one "God."  After the metaphysical world has been created, Urizen becomes the enemy of freedom when he attempts to solidify his idea of truth in terms of law (Hamblen 271-272).  He creates a morality, the enemy of duality, which is a concept crucial to Jung's idea of wholeness of self (Hamblen 271).  Critic Peter Otto states that "Urizen has confused the eternal existence of 'Mathematical Form' with 'Living Form' and Eternity (362).  If Urizen is based on the archetype of oppression through reason, then Los is the counterpart who represents rebellion and imagination.
Los appears around Urizen and is torn from him.  Los is the opposite of Urizen, yet he has sprouted from him.  He is not the will that wishes to have power over others; however, he is the mind that wishes to have intuition and insight.  He is the "Genius of the race" as Hamblen says, and he is the prophetic voice of the poetic imagination of humanity that uses intuition (274).  His separation from Urizen is similar to the separation in the human psyche between the reason and imagination, between Gnosis and blindness by dogma.  For Los to separate from Urizen is a painful event, which causes Los to desire union once more (366-367).  Los' can now only attempt to rebuild the bond that has been broken. 
Los attempts to put Urizen back together and tries to grasp at Eternity and gain a sense of connection with the Eternal will.  From a Marxist standpoint, Los could be seen as the first physical laborer working under a priest class (Paananen Chapter 2).  In later books, Los and Enitharmon become more associated with industrial workers, as well (Saurat 118). The divisions of sex and labor in the poem are symbols of the stifling of the imagination (Saurat 179).  Urizen is asleep or dead, which Peter Otto interprets as a sense that Urizen is temporarily outside of physical time while his creation further forms, and he calls this "chaotic time" (371-372).  Los is the Eternal Prophet, the urge in humans not to control or separate, but to connect with Eternal intuition.  He is the bard to Urizen's priest (Mee 183).  John Mee offers the idea that Los is to be seen as a political revolutionary in his bardic role, whereas other critics would attribute the revolutionary ideal to Orc (184).  However, both characters are to be seen as symbols of innate rebellion against the tyranny of Urizen.  Los realizes that he has been separated from the will of Eternity, and he attempts to regain that unity by building chains to Urizen.  These chains are not a true connection, but merely a "forgetfulness of the eternal sources," according to Hamblen (278).  The connections of Los' reality are as dogmatic arguments that simply seek to prove other dogmatic ideas incorrect, rather than leaving those ideas up to the individual intuition (Hamblen 278).  Another way in which the chains are viewed is that they are constructs that physically separate Urizen from the Eternals (Otto 371).  Los also solidifies the "changes" that Urizen goes through in his "chaotic time" located outside of Los' "sequential time" (Otto 372).  Otto further explains the relationship between chaotic and sequential time is like an "outline" that divides Urizen and Los, dissolving not only their communication, but also their bond as Eternal consciousness and human consciousness (373).  In building the chains of Urizen, he created the human body to interact with the world, which is a place for consciousness to dwell.  
Los creates five senses with which to perceive Eternity; however, each sense falls short of attaining such a connection.  The mind is chained down to a physical brain, which keeps it from being at one with Eternity.  The mind is only able to perceive the horrible void around it at this point.  With the unconscious mind divided into two and then chained back together, the archetypal man is formed.  They are reason and imagination divided, rendering each other weak.  Urizen's law concerning duality, which forces opposites to be considered "good" or "evil," causes the mind to be blinded to true vision, which is the reason that "Horror strikes upon Los's soul" (Hamblen 283).  Los sees Urizen asleep and pities him, because the connection is useless with Urizen dead.  
Los splits into two parts, and a female form, Enitharmon, now exists.  This event is both the split in the sexes of humanity, but also the split in the unconscious of the animus and anima.  The anima is the emotional side of the unconscious mind, characterized as "feminine" because of the association with females and emotion, as opposed to the animus, which represents the masculine aspect of the unconscious (Hopcke 90).  Enitharmon is described as a source of emotion to Los (Hamblen 289).  The Eternals saw this and were saddened, because division leads to control.  They prefer unity.  Pity indicates separation.  It is not empathy.  Hamblen notes that the split reinforces the idea of duality, which the Eternals "shudder" at because it depletes from universality (288).  The Eternals then decide to build a tent around them.  
The tent of the Eternals is called Science (Blake V. 78). Science has no dealings with the nonphysical realm, and in the same way, the Eternals are cut off from the human psyche.  Victor N. Paananen shows that Blake's view of science is that it is founded in the physical world and cannot give truth about the inner world of the human mind because does not allow for imagination (Chapter 2).  While the Eternals build the tent, she is pregnant with a "Worm," Orc, who then grows into a serpent (Blake VI. 11).  As Orc grows, he reflects the evolution of animal life, passing "through many forms of fish, bird, and beast before it will emerge as an infant form" (Hamblen 289).  The tent over them blinded Los from Eternity, and the child was born.  The tent blinds, according to Emily S. Hamblen, because Orc is a product of evolution, which is incompatible with the concept of Eternity, despite the fact that Orc is an improvement over his predecessors (290).  Although the Eternals do not accept Orc, he is still an important figure in the regeneration of Blake's concept of humanity.  
Orc comes from the archetype of the Divine Child, or the "puer aeturnus," as Jung described it.  The Divine Child can be seen as a "symbol of future hopes" for humankind (Hopcke 107).  Orc is also the conscious mind, as he is the factor that ties together the psyche.  He is a revolutionary character, according to Victor N. Paananen, in that he becomes a much more important symbol of rebellion in Blake's later works.  Orc completes the equation as "passion," where Urizen is reason, Los is imagination, and Enitharmon is emotion (Chapter 2).  
His girdles cannot hold him, because he grows so quickly.  He still remembers his Eternal nature, despite having evolved over great distances from his Eternal ancestors (Hamblen 290).  He is the final ingredient necessary to the development of the human psyche, although he is not yet able to reconnect the psyche with its Eternal nature.  They chain him to the rock.  His weeping wakes the dead, including Urizen, who now has senses with which to perceive his world. Urizen then begins to divide the Abyss.  Los, the Prophet "encircled Enitharmon… From the sight of Urizen & Orc" (Blake VII. 37-39).  Enitharmon gives birth to an enormous race, humanity.  Los and Enitharmon must be the ones who create humanity because they are the opposite sexes who lead to reproduction of their original creation, Orc, who completes human consciousness.  
The world that Urizen has created sickens him.  His creations are Thiriel, Utha, Grodna, and Fuzon (i.e., the four elements: air, water, earth, and fire), the world's direct connection to the collective unconscious.  Urizen is sickened because he sees that life feeds on life, and his desire was to have "joy without pain" in Chapter II.  He sees that the following of his law is hopeless, so he forms Religion as a "Net" over the human brain.  Urizen's religion is the attempt to put a permanent label, or dogma, on the metaphysical world, which is the source of intuition and imagination.  Dogma cannot only control others' imaginations, but it can also limit their intuition by separating them from the collective consciousness.  Essentially, dogma strangles the human will.  
The "Web of Religion" is the egoistic assumption that the universe must conform to the psyche, rather than the opposite (Hamblen 295).  Essentially, Urizen is punishing his world despite the fact that he created it, which parallels the Biblical Flood; however, the irony is that the laws themselves are the true evil in "The Book of Urizen" (Mee 188-189).  The "Net of Religion" begins to blind the human race and creates "hipocrisy" (Blake IX. 10).  The idea of a seven-day week with a day of rest appears and lulls them into submission, which is symbolic of state religion, as well as monotheism.  This is the point where humanity is truly separated from "the infinite void" (Blake IX. 22).  "Man is no longer an inspired being," writes Hamblen (296).  
They begin to take Urizen's religion and make it their own law, which separates them from each other.  Humanity now lacks the will to transcend the laws that are placed upon it (Hamblen 296).  Humans have lost touch with Eternity by the bounds of control that stem from Urizen, who is himself part of the unconscious mind.  Humanity resides in Egypt, a place of early human civilization.  Egypt was also a place of early state religion, as John Mee emphasizes (189).  The "sons of Urizen," the elements, try to persuade the people in an attempt to possibly lead them back to knowledge of the Eternals, but their efforts are in vain.  The metaphors for psychological realities have become dogma.  Therefore, Fuzon, fire, called his brethren together, and they left human civilization to fend for itself, leaving behind their legacy of the collective unconscious as a reminder of their unity.  
The most important lesson the poem teaches is that obedience to moral laws does not lead to salvation, but to slavery, as Egypt symbolizes slavery through religion (Mee 190).  Blake continuously stresses that morality and metaphysics should be left to the personal intuition and imagination.  As a model of the psyche, “The Book of Urizen” delves into the idea that the mind contains opposing parts that must be reconciled and unified.  As a political history, it shows that moral law causes division and slavery to ideals that cannot be carried out in a world where each individual has a unique imagination.  The imaginative aspect of Blake’'s work reveals the concept that personal belief systems should not be steeped in dogma, but should be left open to new ways of viewing the world.

Works Cited
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