Urizen

Urizen
Main aliases:	God The Lord Founder
Species:	Archon
Job:	Architect, Head of the Presidency, Supreme Being
Affiliated with:	Great Houses
Place of origin:	The Homeworld
First mentioned in:	The Book of the War [+]Loading...["The Book of the War (novel)"]
Appearance:	Our Finest Gifts We Bring

Many sources documented a foundational figure of the Great Houses as "Urizen the Architect", the original President and Supreme Being, and the semi-mythical Demiurge of the anchored universe. (PROSE: The Book of the War ^[+]Loading...["The Book of the War (novel)"], The Cactus and the Corpse ^[+]Loading...["The Cactus and the Corpse (short story)"], AUDIO: Eternal Escape ^[+]Loading...["Eternal Escape (audio story)"], etc.) He was sometimes equated with "God", (PROSE: The Book of the War ^[+]Loading...["The Book of the War (novel)"]) and also known as the Lord Founder. (PROSE: The Cactus and the Corpse ^[+]Loading...["The Cactus and the Corpse (short story)"], The Claus-Rosen Bridge ^[+]Loading...["The Claus-Rosen Bridge (short story)"])

Nature

Reach of the name

Although The Book of the War suggested that it was the Eremites, a caste of exiled Homeworlders, who specifically used the moniker for the first President in their mocking rites of Urizen, (PROSE: The Book of the War ^[+]Loading...["The Book of the War (novel)"]) other accounts showed the name being in unironic use among the Houses themselves (AUDIO: Eternal Escape ^[+]Loading...["Eternal Escape (audio story)"], PROSE: Our Finest Gifts We Bring) and beyond, including as an object of worship on Gendar, (PROSE: Out of the Box ^[+]Loading...["Out of the Box (short story)"]) and as a name known to the Bookwyrm (PROSE: The Cactus and the Corpse ^[+]Loading...["The Cactus and the Corpse (short story)"]) and to the alter-universal Retconning Crocodiles. (PROSE: Resurrection of the Author ^[+]Loading...["Resurrection of the Author (short story)"])

Relationship to other figures

A depiction of Omega (AUDIO: Omega ^[+]Loading...["Omega (Cutaway audio story)"]) matching Urizen's description as a brown-bearded man resembling Brian Blessed. (PROSE: Our Finest Gifts We Bring)

This Urizen's status as an architect and founder (PROSE: The Book of the War ^[+]Loading...["The Book of the War (novel)"]) who was later the object of a coup (PROSE: The Cactus and the Corpse ^[+]Loading...["The Cactus and the Corpse (short story)"]) had obvious parallels to other accounts' depictions of Rassilon, the architect of the Eye of Harmony who was later thought of as "the founder of [the Time Lords'] modern civilisation", (TV: The Deadly Assassin ^[+]Loading...["The Deadly Assassin (TV story)"]) and by some accounts the first Lord President, (PROSE: The Legacy of Gallifrey ^[+]Loading...["The Legacy of Gallifrey (short story)"]) as well as to Omega, likewise remembered as the figure who allowed the Gallifreyans to become Lords of Time, (TV: The Three Doctors ^[+]Loading...["The Three Doctors (TV story)"]) and who, by some account, ruled them as an autocratic tyrant for some time before being deposed. (PROSE: K9 and the Time Trap ^[+]Loading...["K9 and the Time Trap (novel)"]) Likewise his physical description as a powerfully-built, brown-bearded man resembling Brian Blessed matched distinct accounts of Rassilon (PROSE: Interference ^[+]Loading...["Interference (novel)"]) and Omega. (AUDIO: Omega ^[+]Loading...["Omega (Cutaway audio story)"])

Documented activities

Before the anchoring

Some accounts suggested that Urizen and his fellow founders did not originally possess bodies made of atoms and molecules. One saw him bemoaning that they had "ever gotten involved with the whole daft molecular-matter idea", (PROSE: The Book of the Snowstorm ^[+]Loading...["The Book of the Snowstorm (short story)"]) and another highlighted Urizen's body, even before the anchoring, as "every atom of his being immaculately placed".

This latter account suggested that Urizen, "great Urizen, larger than the land and sea, order and reason embodied", ruled the Morning Star even in "the Tme before there was any Time to be had". He had a "great brown beard" and bore a "striking resemblance to Brian Blessed". Sitting upon a "throne of satin and ivory", he once received a gift from Lady Aesculapius, who had travelled back in meta-time with the help of Sophie Everytime, in the form of the first-ever hourglass he had ever seen. After taking in the sight of the gift, a pleased Urizen "looked, and thought". (PROSE: Our Finest Gifts We Bring)

Anchoring the thread

As the leader of the rationalistic activists on the Homeworld who planned out and effected the anchoring of the thread, (PROSE: The Book of the War ^[+]Loading...["The Book of the War (novel)"]) matching Rassilon's status as figurehead of the Intuitive Revelation, (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible ^[+]Loading...["Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible (novel)"]) the Eremites blamed Urizen for "snatching away" the gleaming future they had envisioned for the Homeworld. Their primary objection was that his anchoring did not only bind the Spiral Politic to an orderly set of laws, but also, in trade-off, made the Houses themselves static and sterile. (PROSE: The Book of the War ^[+]Loading...["The Book of the War (novel)"]) Tirion, a much later member of the Fallen House, knew that Urizen and Urthona had been among the early Causal Initiators who used "machines [Tirion] could never hope to understand" to dimensionally engineer "the whole of History itself". (PROSE: The Dinosaur in the Snow ^[+]Loading...["The Dinosaur in the Snow (short story)"]) "It was said" of the Spiral Yssgaroth that it had been built when the Yssgaroth "constructed their own history in opposition to the Archons'", spinning their own universe "off from that same raw material from which Urizen wrought Creation". (PROSE: The Claus-Rosen Bridge ^[+]Loading...["The Claus-Rosen Bridge (short story)"])

Urizen, an architect, dreamed of a universe of pure mathematics and geometry. He hoped to become its sole Supreme Being in a literal sense, dreaming of "bootstrap monotheism", and in "rare moments of self-abnegating admiration for his own designs", even occasionally considered the option of making the world so purely deterministic and rational than even he would cease to exist. In practice, however, others, such as his own game-master, assisted him in the business of Cosmic Genesis. As a result, other perspectives mixed with his own, creating a fundamentally incoherent mix of logics within the fabric of the new space-time. Even minor, passing thoughts of the anchorers became embedded in the essence of the new laws: for example, Urizen's own annoyance at having stubbed his toe while ascending the ceremonial stairwell led to the fact that "forever after, a surprising percentage of species in the universe would have toes, and find it inordinately painful to stub them". Urizen's breath also smelled of onions, putting them on the mind of another of the founders in the moment of anchoring; because of this, an unlikely number of species in the anchored universe cultivated onions, and the structure of reality itself became onion-like, taking the forms of spheres within spheres. (PROSE: The Book of the Snowstorm ^[+]Loading...["The Book of the Snowstorm (short story)"])

Later activities

After the Cosmic Genesis, Urizen realised that logics other than his preferred laws had been embedded as alternatives within the fabric of reality, but thought he could render them irrelevant by locking down Archon society so that no one would ever take advantage of those alternative sets of laws. (PROSE: The Book of the Snowstorm ^[+]Loading...["The Book of the Snowstorm (short story)"])

According to legend, Urthona originally had a "position at Urizen's side" but "abandoned" it to disappear from history, (PROSE: The Dinosaur in the Snow ^[+]Loading...["The Dinosaur in the Snow (short story)"]) matching accounts of the Other's falling-out with Rassilon, (PROSE: Lungbarrow ^[+]Loading...["Lungbarrow (novel)"], et alt.)

As the first official holder of the Presidency, Urizen governed the Houses after the anchoring, (PROSE: The Book of the War ^[+]Loading...["The Book of the War (novel)"]) notably overseeing the Mapping Project; he ruled as the original "God" and "Supreme Being". (PROSE: The Cactus and the Corpse ^[+]Loading...["The Cactus and the Corpse (short story)"]) Urizen's Wall was erected in his name around the edge of the universe, and a statue of him was among the statues of various noteworthy Archons which seemed to physically hold up the wall. His statue depicted him as "a naked, bearded man like a Greek Titan, almost beautiful, yet hideous — his whole being contorted with effort". (PROSE: The Claus-Rosen Bridge ^[+]Loading...["The Claus-Rosen Bridge (short story)"], The Book of the Snowstorm ^[+]Loading...["The Book of the Snowstorm (short story)"])

Eventually, Urizen's "angels" declared him "unfit for command" and deposed him in a coup against Urizen (PROSE: The Cactus and the Corpse ^[+]Loading...["The Cactus and the Corpse (short story)"]) which was "highly mythologised", as the bridge between the mythical, foundational era of the Archons' history and their "modern" era. (PROSE: Love & War) Urizen's "eternal spirit" was "cleaved from his undying flesh and buried beneath the Cathedral like a dirty secret" while "his role as Supreme Being [was] passed down through an anonymous lines of figureheads" so that the lesser species would not learn of the crisis. (PROSE: The Cactus and the Corpse ^[+]Loading...["The Cactus and the Corpse (short story)"]) There, within the "anomalous void" at the heart of the space-time singularity atop which the Caldera had been built, "Urizen's disembodied mind" led the spirits of other dead Archons in creating "a simulated block-transfer environment (…) a self-sustaining virtual afterlife". (PROSE: Love & War)

Legacy

According to The Book of the War, in Eremite art, Urizen was caricatured as a blind old man using a set of dividers to measure his own dung as spittle hung from his lips. Despite their vows of silence, the Eremites celebrated the "rites of Urizen" by laughing freely. (PROSE: The Book of the War ^[+]Loading...["The Book of the War (novel)"])

Urizen's Red was a wine appreciated by some Archons. (PROSE: The God Who Came For Christmas)

On the eve of the Cosmic War, the Thirteenth Susit referred to the anchored universe as "the House Urizen Built". (PROSE: Love & War) Soldiers of the House Military during the War in Heaven were "sworn to uphold [their] people's history in the name of the Architect". Dionus once swore by "Urizen's beard". (AUDIO: Eternal Escape ^[+]Loading...["Eternal Escape (audio story)"]) During V-Time, Dionus used the expression "Urizen forbid", while another Superior, Tyron, gravely told him "May Urizen light your path" upon parting ways with him on Gulliver's Rest. (PROSE: Our Finest Gifts We Bring)

On Gendar, a planet whose people worshipped the Sun Builders as gods, "Urizen the Architect" was considered one of the most important deities, alongside the likes of Epsilon the Watcher and Vala the Herborist. The Cultists of Urizen, who worshipped him exclusively, were the closest thing to a monotheist religion that existed on Gendar, although they did not go so far as to claim that Urizen was the only god to exist. (PROSE: Out of the Box ^[+]Loading...["Out of the Box (short story)"])

In 2181, the human Meta-Historian published a book entitled Auteur, Dionus, Urizen: Rule #1 As A Species-Wide Trait which "put forward the argument" that many "prominent" Archons were "compulsive liars". By 2323, later Meta-Historian Olivia Kagg Waldermein was familiar with the "highly mythologised" coup against Urizen and with a record of land ownership on the Archons' home planet which was known as the Cadaster of Urizen. (PROSE: Love & War)

One member of the Collective of the Retconning Crocodiles once told Auteur that he thought that while the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids were "inconsequential fools", their Creator was nevertheless a genius, and when he put it into terms for Auteur, he said that the Creator was the equivalent of "a lovechild of Urizen and Nikola Tesla" if that child had then "pursued a double career in robotics and biodata-manipulation". (PROSE: Resurrection of the Author ^[+]Loading...["Resurrection of the Author (short story)"])

Appearance

Urizen had a large brown beard, and was known for his strong resemblance to Brian Blessed in stature and in sound. (PROSE: Our Finest Gifts We Bring ^[+]Loading...["Our Finest Gifts We Bring (short story)"])

Behind the scenes

In William Blake's mythology, Urizen is the embodiment of reason and law. Blake usually portrayed the figure as a bearded old man carrying either architects' tools to constrain the universe or nets to ensnare people in webs of law. His opponent is the embodiment of imagination, Los. The description of the Eremites' caricatures of Urizen is an apparent parody of Blake's The Ancient of Days.

Steve Parkhouse's Rassilon as depicted in The Stockbridge Horror, bearing an obvious resemblance to Urizen.

In any event, identifying a bearded old man, known as an architect and for tying the world down in law, as the first President of the Great Houses of the Time Lords, is obviously reminiscent of Rassilon. Rassilon had been described as an architect and as the originator of the Laws of Time as early as in The Deadly Assassin, and the even more explicitly godlike Matrix Lord incarnation featured in Doctor Who Magazine comics such as The Tides of Time even depicted Rassilon as a bearded old man wearing robes, bringing the character even closer to the Blakean Urizen. In addition, Urizen's antagonism with the embodiment of imagination Los is arguably mirrored by Rassilon's enmity with the Carnival Queen.

However, it is worth noting that not every source places Rassilon as the first President of the Time Lords. According to The Legacy of Gallifrey, the Gallifreyans were already ruled by Presidents even before Rassilon and Omega were born; The Scrolls of Rassilon, meanwhile, states that Pandak was the President of Gallifrey throughout the Eternal War and it was only after becoming a hero of said War that Rassilon overthrew him in a coup. As such, based purely on in-universe evidence, Urizen could plausibly be Pandak or indeed someone else entirely.