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part of the causality, which, greater than the power of any single Zoa or Emanation, embraces all. Luvah and Vala are "suspended in blood" and are unable to descend "nor from Each other avert their eyes." A stationary sun, they stand "above the heavens" in the "bloody sky." Above them is a vision of eternity "as One Man infolded/In Luvah¹s robes of blood." The robes symbolize Luvah's material existence. Christ assumes this finite form and, when this is cut away in Night the Eighth, eternal life is revealed (K. VIII. 341-543). After this revelation the material universe is torn open by Los, precipitat­ing the rain of blood of the apocalypse of Night the Ninth. At the nuptial feast of Los and Enitharmon, however, though the heavens are filled with blood and Luvah and Vala are suspended in an orb of blood with the Divine vision above them, no apocalypse occurs; it is merely anticipated.

Urizen descends prior to the feast and assumes the power of "God from Eternity to Eternity," or the power of order in the finite cycle from eternity to the return to eternity. It is important to note that, limited to the finite, Urizen sees Los as a-visionary whose vision of eternity should be denied. In a late addition Blake stresses the finite limits of Urizen's perception:

"Art thou a visionary of Jesus, the soft delusion of

Eternity?

"Lo I am God, the terrible destroyer, & not the Saviour.

"Why should the Divine Vision compel 1 the sons of Eden

340 "To forego each his own delight, to war against his

spectre?

"The Spectre is the Man. The rest is only delusion & fancy."

CK. I. 337-341)

Urizen's emergence marks an important point in the poem as a whole. Now, all of Albion's component energies are introduced: Tharmas