FOUR ZOAS VIIA-VIII / 85:31-113:36 (12:25-113:36)


Narrative conditioning
of Los and Enitharmon's
conflicting responses to
the return of the Lamb













The Lamb intersects all
 three transformed ele-
ments: the Tree of Mys-
 tery, the war, and
 weaving.





 The Lamb's role in the
 weaving plot:

 in the narrative proper;


lished this opposition in Night I when Urizen accused Jesus of being the
"soft delusion of Eternity," and Urizen himself claimed to be "God the
terrible destroyer & not the Saviour" (12:25-26).
 In that speech in Night I Urizen made no reference to the Lamb despite
its underlying role in the development of overlapping contexts. Indeed, it
is unlikely that Urizen is ever aware of the image of the Lamb as such in the
poem (when he sees the Lamb in Luvah's robes, for example, he perceives
the Lamb as a form of Luvah [101:1-6]). Yet the conclusion to Urizen's
speech in Night I, that "the Spectre is the Man," has been partially con-
firmed by the unfolding ambiguous nature of the Lamb. The Lamb's first
appearance in the poem resulted in a modulation of the "feminine" around
and within the "universal Man" into a "form of vegetation" around "the
Spectre" in Night I. Thus, in its initial appearance the Lamb mediates a
shift of emphasis from the "Man" to the "Spectre." On the other hand, in
Night VIIa, Los embraces the Spectre and gives up his "Domineering
lust" (85:31) because the Spectre speaks: "look upon me / Not as another
but as thy real Self I am thy Spectre / Tho horrible & Ghastly to thine Eyes
... hear what inspired I speak" (85:37-40). This utterance nearly re-enacts
Urizen's speech in Night I. Though it should be difficult to accept Los's
and reject Enitharmon's words concerning the Lamb's function, Blake has
constituted his narrative in a manner designed to make most of his readers
desperately need to do so.
 The re-surfacing of the Lamb into central importance at the end of VIIa
and more urgently in VIII can be no simple matter. The Lamb is intimately
involved in all three of the overlapping transformed structures: he is nailed
to the Tree of Mystery; he appears both inside the woven form of
Jerusalem and in the weaving/unweaving/reweaving syndrome of Rahab
as it is assimilated to the processes of vegetation; and he operates in the
context of the war to "perplex and terrify" Urizen.
 Let us look briefly at the Lamb's involvement in the weaving plot. The
Lamb appears unexpectedly "within Jerusalems Veil" (104:2) as Los and
Enitharmon are engaged in fabricating bodies (initially female counter-
parts) for the (male) spectres. Once this male-female complex assumes the
form of a "Family," however, the role of the females is structurally replaced
by Jerusalem and, surprisingly, the role of the spectres is structurally
replaced by the Lamb of God. In this narrative account the Lamb is
inextricably involved in the woven form of the dead, the males without
female counterparts who "burst forth from the bottoms of their tombs"
(85:18) in an inverse resurrection, descending from Beulah into Ulro
(99:19-21), the space originally created by the Daughters of Beulah for the
Circle of Destiny, one name for the woven form of the Spectre of Thar-
mas. In Night VIIb these myriad dead (who are to be woven in VIII) are
"namd Satans & in the Aggregate they namd Them Satan" (95:14). This
complex of overlapping events constitutes a fundamental structural con-
nection between Satan and the Lamb which suggests that they are perspec-
tive transformations of one another.