The Reason I bought the Deck
No question, IV REASON is my favourite card and the reason (pun!) I bought the deck.
This painting was the frontispiece to "Europe" and depicts Urizen, one of the four Zoas or divine energies. This one represents the mind of Albion. Because Urizen is associated with Air and Mind he goes with Science, the suit of Swords in other decks--I like this too. Albion is the universe personified--the human soul made up of four parts.
Urizen is tied to Zeus, Jehovah, Odin--no matter what pantheism he is the leader of the immortals. Remote, cruel, a white terror, a ghost of gloomy ego and stubbornness. Urizen is often called the Spectre--how apt for The Emperor card. Dualism, repression, one of THE most powerful images and associations in the deck.
I love Ed's phrase for this: "Impaled on the compass points of reason" as he speaks of finite perception denying infinity and introducing error. Domination and absolute law, and Ed hits the mark again when he refers to "fallen intellect." Pride as blindness and restriction. Blake's "Book of Urizen" among his entire mythology, probably requires a lifetime of study, but aren't we lucky to have a scholar like Ed Buryn to light the way? And the breathless, unspeakably beautiful art is unforgettable like a fire in the mind.
Some of these thoughts are augmented from Northrop Frye's book "Fearful Symmetry" (for which this painting is the cover, another apt tie-in.) Frye quotes this passage from the Book of Urizen which I'll quote here for The Emperor:
And Urizen gave life & sense by his immortal Power
To all his Engines of deceit: that linked chains might run
Thro' ranks of war spontaneous; & that hooks & boring screws
Might act according to their forms by innate cruelty.
He formed also harsh instruments of sound
To grate the soul into destruction, or to inflame with fury
The spirits of life, to pervert all the faculties of sense
Into their own destruction, if perhaps he might avert
His own despair even at the cost of every thing that breathes.