ENION'S GRIEF [17]

British Library
Four Zoas Manuscript
Page 17

Four Zoas, Night I, PAGE 17, (E 310) 
"Enion blind & age-bent wept upon the desolate wind 

Why does the Raven cry aloud and no eye pities her?
Why fall the Sparrow & the Robin in the foodless winter?
Faint! shivering they sit on leafless bush, or frozen stone

Wearied with seeking food across the snowy waste; the little     
Heart, cold; and the little tongue consum'd, that once in thoughtless joy
Gave songs of gratitude to waving corn fields round their nest.

Why howl the Lion & the Wolf? why do they roam abroad?
Deluded by summers heat they sport in enormous love
And cast their young out to the hungry wilds & sandy desarts"    

Following are passage from William Blake's Circle of Destiny by Milton Percival which shed light on Enion and the source of her suffering:
Page 295
"The Fall drags Enion into the indefinite of matter - into the Grave, whence she speaks with a comprehensive knowledge of the suffering of nature." 
Page 173
"She feels herself on the way to the dark, blank, abstract matter where she would be but a 'shadow in oblivion.' To prevent that extinction, she weaves a nature that is but a 'shadowy semblance' of eternal nature, but which is nevertheless full of 'mazes of delusive beauty' wherein she can be protected as under the 'shadowy wings.'"
Page 174
"Man's conception of Being is reshaped to accord with his new beliefs. Urthona (man's essential self) is reborn as Time and Space in the persons of Los and Enitharmon. The temporal replaces the eternal. The concepts Time and Space cost Enion her claim to spiritual reality. As the finite and spacial take hold on the mind of man, the Earth-Mother withers into a thing of clay. Descending into matter she goes outward into the strife of the four elements.
...
The inner spirit turned self-righteous, the body pays the price in Enion's blood. Creature is the prey of creature. The curse placed on the earth in Genesis is in effect."
Page 368
"It is not until a dual universe has been achieved that death and decay make their appearance. They come into being with Los' generative world, in which the sexes are separate, in which good and evil struggle with one another, and Tharmas and Enion are known as distinct and antithetical principles. In the world as it is shaped after the Flood, not only are form and matter regarded as distinct, but the one is felt to be living, the other dead. Yet they both contribute their characteristics to the the physical world. Mortality is the logical outcome of their union."

Earlier posts may also help in understanding Enion and her anguish: 
Tharmas as the Zoa of the body in his fallen state is not matter but spirit with no expression in matter. Enion, the emanation of Tharmas becomes matter without association with spirit.

Feeling responsible for the suffering which manifests in Nature she wanders bent and blind and assumes the pain all around her.

Enion separated from Tharmas weaves from the outer and inner ability to perceive, a material instrument of perception; the physical body enclosing the spirit.

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