FOUR ZOAS VIII / 105:55-116:2 (87:55-116:2)


 The narrative con-
 vergence of Vala and the
 False Feminine Counter-
 part as the precondition
 of the entrance ofRahab
 into the narrative proper
 (105:27)








 The secondary crisis of
 Night VIII-the nailing
 of the Lamb to the Tree
 -after which the Lamb,
 Satan, and the Tree van-
ish as agents in the narra-
 tive proper


















The relation between the
plots involving the Tree
 and the garments










 The intersection of nar-
 rative and interpolated
 accounts at their lacunae


identifies as "his vegetated body" [104:37]) "& in the Robes of Luvah."
Significantly, the reference to "the Robes of Luvah" at the Lamb's descent
is the last occurrence of that phrase/image as such in the poem. At this
point the Robes of Luvah have lost their bloody associations (intersecting
Urizen's vision [101:1]); the next time "Robes" appear they are "Scarlet
robes" (105:14) worn by the "False Feminine Counterpart... Vala drawn
down into a Vegetated body" (105:11, 13).
 This covert migration of garments from the Lamb to the emerging
Rahab is acted out through Tirzah, a division of Rahab who sings of
binding her "beloved" on "Stems of Vegetation" (105:53) while torment-
ing him with knives. But it is not Satan, the explicit male without a female
counterpart, who is bound down and tortured: as soon as Tirzah's song
ends, the Lamb immediately appears to enact the females' binding by
being nailed to the tree:

 The Lamb of God descended thro the twelve portions ofLuvah
 Bearing his sorrows & rec[iev]ing all his cruel wounds
 Thus was the Lamb of God condemned to Death
 They naild him upon the tree of Mystery
 (105:55-56; 106:1-2)

The narrator's attempt to keep Satan and the Lamb separate (despite their
mutual narrative interconstitution) collapses whenJerusalem's perception
transforms the Lamb nailed to the tree into the "Body dead upon the
Cross" (106:1-7).
 From this point on, Satan, the Lamb of God, and the Tree of Mystery
virtually disappear as agents from the narrative proper, revealing their
narrative and structural intertwining. In transforming the Lamb into the
Body, Jerusalem says, "Is this Eternal Death," fulfilling Enitharmon's fear
that the descending Lamb would bring Eternal Death (87:55). Because the
Lamb was initially the source of the context in which Eternal Death
became recognizable in Night I, this development seems more like a
deeply repressed regression. Confusion of the Lamb with Satan reveals
itself in an even more disturbing way when the crucifixion is absorbed
into the complex weaving plot as a cutting of the Lamb's garments as first
introduced in the song of the Sons of Eden. Since the Lamb was born in
mysterys woven mantle" ("his vegetated body") and in the Robes of
Luvah, we might expect the nailing to be perspectivally analyzed as a
cutting of one or the other or both of these garments. Yet, at the moment
of cutting, the garment itself undergoes a metamorphosis: "Rahab... cut
off the Mantle of Luvah from / The Lamb of God" (113:38-39). We know
the "Robes of Luvah" disappear as such after the Lamb is born in them and
migrate to Rahab as "Scarlet robes." Thus the garment Rahab cuts from
the Lamb must be some version of her own mantles: the moment of
Rahab's cutting in the narrative proper intersects the lacuna that occurs in
the song of the Sons of Eden when Rahab creates the clothing of blood
while thinking to smite the Lamb. In the Sons' song Luvah was absent,