81

"It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of

prosperity:

"Thus could I sing & thus rejoice: but it is not so with me."

(K. II. 402-418)

Enion's lament recapitulates the suffering in which the Pythagorean universe of form and harmony is embedded. Although the geometric harmonies which unite all aspects of the first universe are measurably perfect, the abstraction of that perfection is indifferent to the suffering it unites. Thus, when Ahania hears Enion she perceives the totality of suffering in the first universe. Her knowledge of this truth establishes the pre-conditions for the second fall, for she reveals the illusion of Urizen's rational universe to him:

Ahania heard the Lamentation, & a swift Vibration

Spread thro' her Golden frame. She rose up e'er

the dawn of day

When Urizen slept on his couch; drawn thro' unbounded

space

On to the margin of Non Entity the bright Female came.

There she beheld the [terrible del.] Spectrous form of

Enion in the Void,

And never from that moment could she rest upon her

pillow.

ck. II. 419-424)

End of the Second Night

The rational illusion of Urizen

A second fall and a consequent collapse into chaos occurs in Night the Third, which is divided accordingly into two main patterns of action. The first involves a dialogue between Ahania and Urizen in which Ahania reveals the illusion of the first universe to Urizen. He casts out Ahania and thereby falls himself. The second main pattern of action describes the impact of the second fall upon the primal energies of Tharmas and Enion.

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