CHAPTER VIII The Second Fall

Blake's systematic establishing of generation and being, time and space, motion and attraction, and order gives the- poem a rational cosmology. Accordingly, The Four Zoas is not "externally unexplained", (see chapter I). This means that it is now possible to define further the relations between Zoa and Emanation immediately before the second fall.

Two of the Zoas, Tharmas and Luvah, are dissolved in the fabric of the first universe; Tharmas becomes its atomic stratum of being and matter, and the sacrificed Luvah energizes it. Although dissolved, the states of the two are preserved; Tharmas in the form of the waters of chaos round the mundane shell of Urizen. and Luvah by Christ, who assumes Luvah's robes of blood. Hence, only two of the Zoas, Los and Urizen, are extant and potent at this point and their ensuing conflict is the prime reason for the second fall.

The complementary energies of the four Emanations are likewise divided: Enion is at the edge of "Non Entity" (K. II. 422); Vala is "like a shadow" (K. II. 214); Ahania is a "shadowy form now separate" (K. II. 204); and Enitharmon has dissipated into "clouds of swift obscurity" (K. II. 310). All four of the Emanations are driven into extreme states of division from their respective Zoas.

The energies of the Zoas have fallen into an illusion of geometric form, and the formative principles of the Emanations have fallen into indefiniteness. Their psychological relations disoriented by the

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