Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/17

 Rh nine divisions of Vala begins with the entrance of Los and Enitharmon into corporeal life, and the arising out of that life of the spectral reason.

In the second night corresponding to the Heart of the Head, this reason builds round them the beautiful external and feminine or passive world. In the third night the spectral reason wars with its emotional nature, as we have seen Satan in " Milton " war with heaven. The third stage tends always to be a combination of the first and second. Its great symbol is Virgo-Scorpio, the hermaphroditic monster who expresses vegetative life. In the fourth night the reason is forced to take on a personal shape. In the fifth night, or in the Heart of the Heart, Orc, or the love of that beautiful external world built in the second night, is born from Los and Enitharmon. Time and space and all outer things begin to live and move. Reason is awakened by this new energy and begins to explore his kingdom of outer nature. He wanders with a globe of fire — the personal energy, and goes through a series of strange circles from east to west, which symbolizes, among much else, the ever recurring incarnations of man's personal mind. The result of his explorations, or reasoning about outer things, is the creation of restrictive law (a net). In the seventh night (the Head of the Loins), the tree of knowledge or of external nature overshadows all, the mortal body or corporeal personality follows in the fourth stage from the maturing of the mental personality. In the eighth night, corresponding to the Heart and the Loins, a human or imaginative personality is given to mortal love on the fourth night, after its birth from the Heart of Enitharmon. On the ninth night the merely mortal life is completed and ended. Europe, America, and the Song of Los follow, and are tabulated in one line, for they make practically one poem. In Africa (Head) the religions are made, and the emotions are brought under the sway of abstract thought. In Asia (Heart) emotional life gains dominion. In America (the third stage) England, the reason, contends with America its emanation, as