ORC: CONFRONTS THE FEMALE SHADOW


of Orc's awareness of the arts ofUrizen, who seems to be nowhere in sight
in the narrative proper. Yet, in the first half of the simile, the narrator says,
"Silence waits around him / A moment." This "silence" appears in the
second half of the simile describing the serpent form itself which is "Silent
as despairing love & strong as Jealousy" (91:13).
 The third movement of this passage begins with the mention of
"Jealousy," the Chain that holds Orc, which suddenly, ironically, becomes
the source of Orc's ability to "rend the links" and "free" his "wrists of fire"
(91:17). Because Orc's sensual energy derives from being bound down,
when he is released by Urizen's hypocrisy in VIIa he rises like a worm in
"peace unbound," a state akin to the meekness the Shadow desires; and
when he is released in VIIb by his own jealousy, his unbinding renders him
only momentarily powerful, raging as an erect serpent bulk whose energy
is dissipated and absorbed as he rends the "nameless shadow." Thus in
rending his links (as the trees rend the heavens) he also sexually rends the
"nameless shadow" who overlaps both Enitharmon's Shadow and Vala.
Thus in VIIb Blake contrasts the account of Orc's loss of power by Uri-
zen's arts with the account that emphasizes Orc's momentary assumption
of power through the Shadow's sexual temptation of Ore.
 The Orc plot re-emerges in VIIb following the "war song" of the
"demons of the deep" who previously sang at the Feast in Night I and at
Orc's birth in Night V. Thus their appearance marks the internal connec-
tion between Orc's rending the shadow, Los's distorted sexual energy, and
the wedding Feast. In each of their appearances the demons relate a tale of
violent warfare, and in each case their songs function as perspective
analyses of the narrative context in which they are embedded: in Night I,
however, the Demons' song seemed extraordinarily out of place; in Night
V it seemed more appropriate, though no less enigmatic; in Night VIIb,
however, the demons' song seems to be an interpretation, almost a repeti-
tion, of what is happening in the narrative proper. The central events of the
demons'song analyze Orc's assumption of a serpent form (an event simul-
taneous with his rending the Shadow) into three aspects: 1) a war in which
"Vala" is a central participant; 2) a nailing of"Luvah" to "the tree" (92:13);
and 3) a forging by Urizen's sons of war machinery, "Wheel without
wheel" (92:26), which Urizen has already employed in the war in VI and
earlier in VIIb and which the demons identify as Urizen's subversive "arts
of death." Wheels are created to "perplex youth.. .that they might spend
the days of wisdom / In sorrowful drudgery to obtain a scanty pittance of
bread" (92:27, 30-31). Other key components of the narrative proper-
Orc's serpent form on the Tree, the Shadow's embracing Orc's fires, and
Orc's temporary unleashing-would be transposed into the demons'
song, only if it were possible at this point to identify the Shadow undialec-
tically with Vala and to identify Orc's serpent form undialectically with
Luvah nailed to the tree. The imagery of the nailing by unnamed "brothers
of war" (92:10) implicitly associates these "brothers" with Urizen, the
"spear" (92:14) and the "helmet" (92:12) both having been carried by


phase 3: jealousy, the
source of Orc's binding,
is the source of his
release and sexual
dissipation.












The demons'song in
Night VIIb intrudes be-
tween two versions of
the Ore/Shadow con-
frontation.







Three phases of the
demons' war song








The war song of the
demons of the deep dis-
places the Orc/Shadow
plot onto a Luvah/Vala
plot.

In Night VIII, females,
not males, nail the Lamb
to the Tree
(105:39-106:6).