Symbolic Importance of William Blake’s Urizen for Lucas North

Finally my first book about Blake and his theories arrived.

What I learned in the book is that Blake with the symbol of Urizen is not only mistrusting systems, but also the rational thinking of the individual. This is his distancing himself from the enlightenment which cultivated and worshipped the Reason of man. Blake mistrusts the separation of one authoritative element (=1 person) from the ‘human brotherhood’.

What I so far overlooked in my analysis of the symbolic meaning of Urizen for Lucas North is, that Blake’s critique does not only reach the systems of religion and political government of mankind, but also the reasoning and thought system of each individual.
Lucas might as easily mistrust himself and his own judgment as he does mistrust systems.

The reasoning of mankind in Blake’s theory follows special traditions.
He especially mistrusts the age of enlightenment, as it creates an individual entity of reason with absolute power of judgment. The individual has no limitation by the surrounding society and limiting necessities of social connections.

My conclusion is therefore, that Urzien for Lucas North is a kind of sign, that he does mistrust himself and his own judgment as well as the judgment of systems like governments and especially the MI-5.

This might also be cause for his rather passive role as member of the grid and especially as leader of section D.
It irritated me greatly, that in Series 9 Lucas never makes a conclusion or has a leading idea himself. He always acts on conclusions of others and follows through with delegating the necessary workloads, but he never sets the route. The ideas always come from somebody else, e.g. in episode 9.5 from Ruth, in other situations from Beth, Dimitri or Harry.
This is what really made me doubt that Lucas still is the brilliant spy as described.
Before series 9, I thought the reason for this lack of active participation might be, that Ross was leader of the section, but in series 9 the lack of his active participation became very obvious, when he became section chief and still did not lead in a more active way. This lead me to wonder, why this was even so before Vaughan threatened him.

What is the reason of the scriptwriters showing Lucas like that? At the same time Spooks 9 is the first time, that Lucas gets small tokens of appreciation for his work by Harry, when in my opinion he does not deserve it or at least not any longer.
Episode 9.6 further confirms this, as all the clever planning and finding of the attackers of the security system is done with Lucas off the grid. While Lucas is only following through with Vaughan’s blackmailing threat, not scheming himself and even in his trying to find a way out for himself and Maya only follows the route Vaughan set for him.

The Urizen symbol might also have had a connection to Lucas’ past as John. John in his youth might have been a kind of idealist with ideals of either a perfect democracy (which only gives a social entity power and not an individual) or some kind of communism (who would also set the society ahead of the needs of an individual).
This would not explain all his time he held out in the Russian prison, though. Except that the tattoos might have been an adept sign to ease his time in the Russian prison and support his ‘friendship’ with Oleg Darsharvin.

In the end the symbol might even not be so much of a description of his character, but a sign for what Lucas is prepared to do and to endure to safe and ease his life.