FOUR ZOAS VIII / 101:33-104:27 (91:14-104:27)


The sexual dimensions
 of war become her-
 maphroditic.


deluded harlot of the Kings of Earth" (91:14-15). Although Urizen resists
consciousness of his sexuality more strongly than ever, when he closes
sexuality in "secret" chambers in his temple as the inner sanctum is built,
he actually generates harlotry: "when hid in chambers dark the nightly
harlot / Plays in Disguise in whisperd hymn & mumbling prayer"
(96:5-6).
 The shape the war explicitly assumes in Night VIII is that of "a
Shadowy hermaphrodite," "a form / Which he [Urizen] intended not"
(101:33-34). Thus the involvement of the war with Urizen's sexually dis-
torting "religion" allows the war itself to assume the form of a perverse
sexuality. This war is named "Satan" (101:35), a name that emerges into
central importance in Night VIII and is a primary source of manifold
confusion there, for the Satanic form of his battle expresses itself through
two conflicting aspects. First, in the version just cited, the narrator labels
the war "Hermaphroditic... hiding the Male / Within as in a Tabernacle"
(101:36-37). In the second version, the "war" now being waged "round
Jerusalems Gates" becomes a "Vast Hermaphroditic form" (104:19-20);
but in this form the war absorbs the role of the Tree of Mystery as the locus
or primary agent of the emergence of the male spectres without coun-
terparts who "burst" from the bottoms of the tombs in Nights VIla and
VIIb: the

 Hermaphroditic form
 Heavd like an Earthquake labring with convulsive groans
 Intolerable at length an awful wonder burst
 From the Hermaphroditic bosom Satan he was named
 Son of Perdition terrible his form dishumanizd monstrous
 A male without a female counterpart a howling fiend
 Fo[r]lorn of Eden & repugnant to the forms of life
 Yet hiding the shadowy female Vala as in an ark & Curtains
 (104:20-27)

As with all events and characters in The Four Zoas, the order of the events
through which Satan emerges into the narrative is a primary constituent of
Satan's significance. Satan's conflicting sexual forms are thus inseparable
from the evolving complexity of the war and the perspective transforma-
tions that the narrative field undergoes in Night VIII. The perverse sexual
forms under which Satan appears radically absorb and transform other
apparently causally distinct births: the ambiguous birth the Shadow of
Enitharmon undergoes in VIIa, which reintroduces weaving and which in
turn is a version of the Tree's bearing of fruit; the birth of Urizen from the
Eternal Man/Vala tryst in the Shadow of Enitharmon's vision in VIIa; and
Ore's own birth from the "Earth" in Night V. Thus, the Tree with its
sexual/perceptual implications, the act of weaving with its internal sexual
meaning, and the war, which eventually takes on a sexual form, all con-
spire to transform elements from prior Nights into an internally divided,
almost unrecognizable structure.