THE TREE OF MYSTERY: TRANSFORMATIONS


becomes the source of Orc's power to "rend the links [and] free.., the
wrists of fire" (91:17). But what appears to be his liberation ultimately
produces Orc's serpent form-exactly the same effect produced by
Urizen's hypocritical "arts" in VIIa: following another demons' song,
the Shadowy Female "joyd in all the Conflict Gratified & drinking
tears of woe / No more remained of Orc but the Serpent round the tree of
Mystery / The form of Orc was gone" (93:23-25). There are thus two
alternative versions of Orc's transformation into a serpent form (one by
Urizen in VIIa and one by the Shadowy Female in VIIb), just as there
are two versions of how the Shadowy Female acquires power (one in
which she actually becomes part of the Tree itself by feeding Orc, and
one in which she is the force that deprives Orc of his human form by sex-
ually tempting him into a jealous rage, leaving nothing visible but the
serpent around the Tree).
 All of these accounts presuppose the mystifying power of the Tree as a
perspective transformation of Orc's Chain of Jealousy and of Urizen's
repression of his own sexual vulnerability. Consequently, this transforma-
tion also reveals how Los and Enitharmon themselves have been trans-
formed by the Tree's presence and how the detached or alienated forms of
their denied sexuality-the Spectre and the Shadow of Enitharmon-can
sexually unite beneath the Tree, while above the Tree Los laments in
jealousy, and Enitharmon lies "pale as Snow" in a "cold disease" (81:14,
21). Following the sexual union of the Spectre and the Shadow, the Tree of
Mystery takes "root in the World of Los" (85:23) and thereby infiltrates
and mystifies all the actions of Los and Enitharmon in the later sections of
VIIa and all of VIII. Los and Enitharmon's awareness ofa need for redemp-
tion emerges out of their eating the poisonous sexual fruit of the Tree, and
their apparent shift from cruelty to love in fabricating forms, weaving
bodies, and creating a family occurs precisely within the subversive con-
text of the Tree: "Los sat in Golgonooza in the Gate of Luban where / He
had erected many porches where branch the Mysterious Tree / Where
the Spectrous dead wail" (90:2-4). Though the Tree seems spatially
separated from Los and Enitharmon's activities in VIII, it persists invisibly
as the context of their actions, since they have incorporated it by eating its
fruit, which, in one version, is the serpent form of Orc (101:11-20).
 The most radical transformation of the Tree from its perspective base in
the Chain of Jealousy accompanies the re-surfacing of two of the most
elliptical and enigmatic characters in the entire poem: the Lamb of God
andJerusalem. In the development of the narrative it is irreducibly unclear
whether the image of the serpent Orc on the "Tree" is actually a version of
the image of the Lamb nailed to the "tree" or whether they are only
structurally parallel images. Blake's Lamb of God is condemnedd to Death /
They naild him upon the tree of Mystery" (106:1-2) in the context of a
new character, Tirzah, who sings of binding her beloved upon the "Stems
of Vegetation" (105:53). One aspect of the Lamb thus functions as the
females' "beloved" who, like Orc, is bound on the Tree of Mystery. The


The Tree of Mystery
infiltrates the Los/
Enitharmon plot.