The Book of Urizen

This early prophetic book first appeared in 1794 and had it's last printing in 1815.

In the Marriage of Heaven and Hell Blake promised a Bible of Hell, and the Book of Urizen might well be considered the demonic version of Genesis.

It's in the form of nine chapters (perhaps representing the 9 months of human gestation), form repeated with the 9 nights of The Four Zoas.

The primary character, Urizen, creates a world of rigid laws, a completely materialistic world with no vestige of any sort of spiritual reality.

The Book of Urizen might well be thought of as a sort of Introduction or Preface to The Four Zoas. Here we meet zoas, to be fleshed out with tremendous detail in the major prophesies, The Four Zoas, Milton, and Jerusalem.

There are 27 plates in all, and each of them might provide a source for further study and understanding of Urizen and of Blake's myth as a whole.