27

So saying. From her bosom weaving soft in sinewy threads

70 A tabernacle [of delight del.] for Jerusalem, she sat

among the Rocks

Singing her lamentation. Tharmas groan'd among his Clouds

Weeping; [and del.] then bending from his Clouds, he stoop'd

his [holy del.] innocent head,

And stretching out his holy hand in the vast deep sublime,

Turn'd round the circle of Destiny with tears & bitter sighs

75 And said: "Return, 0 wanderer, when the day of Clouds is o'er." (K. I, 69-75)

When Enion completes the tabernacle woven for the finite shrine of Jerusalem, Tharmas surrounds it with the "circle of Destiny," The multiple references to "Clouds" indicates that Tharmas is as he was in line 45: "Trembling & pale sat Tharmas, weeping in his clouds." The finite is symbolized as vague, unformed, and composed of the indefinite elements of air and water. This matter 'fills' the circle.

In this first universe the circle of destiny 'encircles' the first of the major patterns of action. Its equivalent in the second, or natural universe is the creation of a continuum of serial time by Los. Here the primary symbolic significance of the circle of destiny is to mark the beginning and end of the first cycle of being and generation, time and space, motion and attraction, and order.

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Significantly, Urizen is associated with the ending of both the circle of destiny and the continuum of serial time. In the first universe, in Night the Third, Urizen's fall breaks the circle: "A crash ran thro' the immense. The bounds of Destiny were broken./The bounds of Destiny were crash'd direful" (K. III. 135-136). In the second universe, in Night the Ninth, a cleansing of Urizen's perceptions breaks the chain of serial time: "He ceas'd, for riv'n link from link. The bursting Universe explodes" (K. IX. 230).