THE MESSENGERS RECOUNT A MALE/MALE POLITICAL CONFERENCE



of the ongoing war and its roots in the Urizen/Luvah conference and thus
needs the messengers' tale in order to act. To the extent that the divine
presence is ceremoniously separate from the Council of God, however, it
must be separate from Jesus as well.
 Since the messengers from Beulah have no awareness of Eno's opening
of the center, it is not surprising that they make no reference to the sexual
foundations of Eternal Death. To them, the jealousy plot involving Thar-
mas, Enion, Los, and Enitharmon is merely one consequence of the male
political plot and power struggle between Urizen and Luvah. Thus their
account is not a consistent supplement to the information of the first half
of Night I because it generates information in reverse order to the unfold-
ing narrative in the first primary bracket, and that redistribution of forces
completely alters the meanings, relations, and internal organization of
characters and events within the narrative field. There are points of
absolute contradiction between the messengers' account and the narrative
of the first primary bracket, and yet it is on the basis of the messengers
account that the "Family Divine" acts.
 The messengers from Beulah purport to give a causal history of the
Urizen/Luvah plot. They are, however, unwilling (or unable) to push
their analysis back far enough in time: although they begin their tale with
the "Eternal" (and not the "Fallen" or the "Wandering") Man, he is already
out of "harmony" with the Council, weeping "in pain" (21:17), isolated in
"the holy tent" (21:16). The messengers suggest no cause for this pain; in
fact they do not seem to feel it needs any explanation. It is a given of their
story, as though the "divine presence" already knows why the Eternal
Man weeps, and yet the story they unfold virtually creates the precondi-
tions for that pain. As might be expected, the action of their account is
firmly anchored in Beulah, where rest, sleep, and sexual division become
possible: "his family / Slept round on hills & valleys in the regions of his
love" (21:17-18); this landscape simultaneously parodies the harmonious
setting around the Feast (13:12-15).
 The first major discrepancy in the messengers' account, though, is that
they report Luvah and Urizen waking from this slumberous state, in direct
contrast to Enitharmon's interpolated vision in which Urizen and the Man
slept while Luvah and Vala woke (10:10-11). Vala, so crucial to the sexual
plot of Los and Enitharnton, is completely absent from the messengers'
account. In thus substituting a male power struggle between Urizen and
Luvah for the sexual conflict of the Tharmas/Enion bracket, the messen-
gers report a conference (21:19) between Urizen and Luvah that con-
stitutes, quite literally, a form of council, though Blake carefully refrains
from labelling their present conversation as such. Later, however, Urizen
will murkily "remember" this conference as happening "in the night of
councils dark" (64:21-26). This present conversation between Urizen and
Luvah is an oblique transformation of "the Council of God" itself, which,
as noted above, consolidates terms associated with both Urizen and
Luvah.


The narrative con-
straints on the report
given by the Messengers
from Beulah: another
account of the Urizen/
Luvah antagonism and
the horses of light




























Narrative suppression of
the term "council" in
reference to the Urizen/
Luvah conference: cf.
the sexual conference be-
tween the Spectre of Ur-
thona and the Shadow of
Enitharmon in Night
VIla (82:37-85:3) in
which the origin of Uri-
zen and Luvah is
recounted. See below,
pp. 292-97.