FOUR ZOAS II / 30:23-45


 Urizen's "Shadowy
 Feminine Semblance"
materializes at the center
 of his architecture.

























 The sexual dimensions
 of Urizen's Golden Hall





Urizen uses explicit sub-
stitution in the context
 of sexual division, as
 opposed to the implicit
 use of fictional substitu-
 tion by Los and Enithar-
 mon in Night I.


with the sexual separation of Luvah and Vala and their enforced slavery.
The fires return when all that remains of the Luvah/Vala complex in the
narrative is molten metal and ashes, the fire itself having gone out. The
reappearance of the fires projects sexual division and slave/master victimi-
zation directly into the heart of Urizen's creation, one manifestation of
which is the inversion of sexual imagery associated with the architecture
that encloses Urizen's Golden Hall--domes for his daughters and halls for
his sons. This inversion of sexual imagery partially deflects the sudden
appearance of Urizen's own sexual offspring, yet it parallels the sexual
confusion of the female Serpent in Luvah's account. Urizen's enclosure in
architecture that signifies his progeny is closely associated with his aware-
ness of his division from Ahania. This situation parodies what Luvah had
perceived with such horror of his own state: his "sons & daughters /...
have taken her away & hid her from my sight / They have surrounded me
with walls of iron & brass" (27:7-9).
 Urizen's "Shadowy Feminine Semblance" (30:23) enters the poem
reposing on a couch, which should not seem arbitrary: both Jerusalem
(20:10) and Albion (23:1 and 25:28) have appeared on couches, hinting
further thatJerusalem and Albion are estranged sexual partners residing in
the same place but unaware of one another. Urizen's Feminine Semblance
emerges where Urizen's enclosing Golden Hall is completed, precisely at
the western side. The setting sun was the first definition of Tharmas in
Night I-the sexual "Parent" from whom sexual division was first gen-
erated. Urizen's own repressed sexual energy ("steaming fires") re-
emerges, occasioning a demonstration of the ease with which Urizen is
able to repress this apparently new (and unplanned) feature of his cosmos.
Paradigmatically, Urizen's power to reject his female counterpart is
grounded in a primary aspect of his cosmology-the "nets" that "con-
dens[e] the strong energies into little compass" transforming free spirits
into "seeds" or "roots" (30:5-7), literally imprisoning reproductive en-
ergy. Urizen's power to repress his relation to this "Shadowy Feminine
Semblance," soon to be named Ahania (the name of his Bride who was
already "distant far" at the Wedding Feast of Night I) parallels his ability to
substitute, in place of fires from his own limbs, fires of ambiguous source
"to glow upon the pale / Females limbs in his absence" (30:30-31) by
creating a "recess in the wall" "toward the West." The ambiguous source
of Urizen's suddenly acknowledged fires invites a relation between the
vanished fires of Luvah/Vala and those Urizen refuses his female. Her
coldness derives from his rejection of sexual identity:
 when he turned his back
 Upon his Golden hall & sought the Labyrinthine porches
 Of his wide heaven Trembling, cold in paling fears she sat
 A Shadow of Despair
 (30:26-29)

Night II began with Albion hearing Enion's voice in his "Porches," and
with Urizen assuming authority in the "golden porches" of the "Human