In the mythological writings

William Blake's mythology

The prophetic books of the English poet and artist William Blake contain a rich invented mythology , in which Blake worked to encode his revolutionary spiritual and political ideas into a prophecy for a new age. This desire to recreate the cosmos is the heart of his work and his psychology...

 of William Blake

William Blake

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...

, Thiriel is the first son of Urizen

Urizen

In the complex mythology of William Blake, Urizen is the embodiment of conventional reason and law. He is usually depicted as a bearded old man; he sometimes bears architect's tools, to create and constrain the universe; or nets, with which he ensnares people in webs of law and conventional culture...

. There is a possible confusion with Tiriel

Tiriel

Tiriel is the eponymous character in a poem by William Blake written c.1789, and considered the first of his prophetic books. The character of Tiriel is often interpreted as a foreshadowing of Urizen, representative of conventionality and conformity, and one of the major characters in Blake's as...

, the protagonist of the first prophetic book, of that name.

In The Book of Urizen

The Book of Urizen

The Book of Urizen is one of the major prophetic books of the English writer William Blake, illustrated by Blake's own plates. It was originally published as The First Book of Urizen in 1794. Later editions dropped the "First". The book takes its name from the character Urizen in Blake's mythology,...

, he has an explicit identification of his place as Air in the Four Elements

Four elements

Four elements may refer to:* Classical elements, such as air, fire, earth and water* 4 Elements, an album by Chronic Future* Group 4 element, one of the chemical elements in Group 4 of the periodic table...

, matched to Urizen's four sons. His birth is described in Chapter VIII:

Most Urizen sicken'd to see

His eternal creations appear,

Sons and daughters of sorrow, on mountains,

Weeping, wailing. First Thiriel appear'd,

Astonish'd at his own existence,

Like a man from a cloud born

He appears also in The Four Zoas

Vala, or The Four Zoas

Vala, or The Four Zoas refers to one of the incompleted prophetic books by English poet William Blake, begun in 1797. The titular main characters of the book are The Four Zoas: , who were created by the fall of Albion in Blake's mythology. It consists of nine books, referred to as "nights"...

, where he becomes Palamabron

Palamabron

Palamabron is a character in William Blake's mythology, representing pity.He is the brother of Rintrah , Bromion , and Theotormon , represented together as either the Sons of Los or of Jerusalem....

. At the end of the Seventh Night, we read:

Urizen became Rintrah Thiriel became Palamabron