THE TREE OF MYSTERY: CHAIN, SERPENT, FRUIT


iron," thereby forcing to the surface exactly what Urizen needs to repress
(79:27). Their singing aloud of the book of iron (whose words are never
revealed directly in the text) emerges into the narrative simultaneously
with their "Kneading the bread of Orc" (79:28), which immediately pro-
duces "hunger" in Orc (79:29). This action resurrects the musically gener-
ated "fleshly bread" of Night I (12:44) that issued in Enion's "hunger" and
Urizen's "faded radiance" (16:16-21). It also projects onto Orc the sub-
plot of Night VI in which Urizen hungered after the food embodied in
Tharmas' flight (69:15-22).
 Since linear, manipulative language is his source of power over Orc as
well as the locus of his own hidden sexuality, Urizen must simultaneously
acknowledge and repress the sexual information contained in the book of
iron: he thus reads to Orc, not from the book of iron itself, but from a
transformation, a malleable mystification of it, the "book of brass" that
does exactly what Urizen needs it to do: it acknowledges sexuality, but
only as a disgusting evil that must be suppressed and undermined by
means of verbal and political hypocrisy. In short, Urizen's language
explicitly divides from itself, for the first time consciously meaning the
opposite of what it says. It is only in this form of verbal "hypocrisy" that
Orc can hear Urizen's words as words: this self-divided language
immediately divides Orc. Orc thus perceives Urizen's icy image as a form
of deceptive language at the moment he feels himself divide: "Curse thy
Cold hypocrisy, already round thy Tree / ... thou beginnest to weaken /
My divided Spirit" (80:27-29).
 Orc's serpent form on the Tree, which is constituted by "scales that
shine with gold & rubies" (80:28), becomes, in Night VIII, thefruit of the
Tree of Mystery itself: like the budding of the Tree's "fruit" in Night VIIa,
"His furious neck writ[hes] contortive in dire budding pains" (101:12);
and the "gems" of his "scaly armour" are "the fruit of the mysterious tree /
Kneaded in Uveths [Urizen's daughter's] kneading trough" (101:16-17).
This "fruit" is simultaneously Orc's bodily excrement: the "gems & gold /
Exuded round his awful limbs Stretching to serpent length / His human
bulk" (101:18-20). Thus the bread of Orc, which enters the narrative
proper of Night VIIa at the same moment the book of iron reappears, is a
mechanism that produces (via Orc's excrement) thejeweled serpent as the
fruit of the Tree.
 Because it is a transformation of Orc's Chain ofJealousy, the Tree's fruit
covertly embodies Los's as well as Urizen's repressed sexuality. When the
fruit re-surfaces in Night VIII as an excremental residue of Orc's devour-
ing the food prepared for him by Urizen's Daughters, it "Exud[es],"
brings to the surface, other hidden aspects of Orc already present in his
confrontation with Urizen in Night VIIa-the "worm" and the raging,
bound "Man" (80:35). This surfacing, which happens both because of and
despite Urizen's attempt to transform Orc into a form he can control,
enables the "dark shadowy female" (who overlaps both the "Shadow of
Enitharmon," who first enters the poem in Night VIIa, and "Vala," who


Urizen becomes self-
consciously hypocriti-
cal: his divisive verbal
arts create Ore's serpent
form.










Contextual modulations
of Orc's serpent form











The Tree's fruit mediates
between Urizen's rela-
tion to Orc and Urizen's
relation to the Shadowy
Female.