Ten Houses of Eve

Can you see the ten houses of Eve, yeah? (1)
And can you enter the ten houses of Eve, yeah?
And will you deny your own treat?
Dare you enter the ten houses of Eve, yeah?
Turn around and face ten houses of Eve, yeah
If only
Identity art (2)
If only the shards would relocate back in place
In your blue green and grey heart
Bedecked in lace
If only, if only thouldst could (3)
In a rap sort of style (4)
Understand
(Will those shards relocate?)
If only...
Can you dig the ten houses of Eve, yeah?
Turn around and look at the ten houses of Eve, yeah
And will blood flow 'til you see  (5)
Do you believe enough to enter the houses of Eve
Wake up and see...
Do you believe?
The ten houses of Eve

1. The first live version referred to "ten houses of evil." A 1957 book about a woman with a multiple personality disorder was entitled The Three Faces of Eve; a movie based on the book, and bearing the same title, was released the same year, and Joanne Woodward won an Academy Award for her portrayal of the title character. The woman in question, one Chris Sizemore, has since contested the veracity of some of the claims in the book. Woodward later played a psychiatrist in Sybil, a 1976 film about a woman with no less than 13 distinct personalities (11 female and two male). Tin foil hat time: Sybil's 13 minus Eve's three equals MES's 10.

Multiple "houses" also figure in astrology, a theme MES was to take up on "Two Librans."  

The melody is more or less taken from "Evil Hoodoo" by the Seeds (thanks to Zack for pointing this out).

Harley mentions that Eve is the archetypal female, associated with temptation, so the "houses" may be thought of as brothels in this regard.

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2. This and the following lines may be a reference to multiple personalities, reinforcing the Three Faces of Eve connection.

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3. "Thouldst" is not grammatically correct here; in the nominative, it would simply be "thou."

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4. On "U.S. 80s-90s" MES calls himself "the big-shot original rapper." Continuing with the multiple personality hypothesis, the word here may be a reference to therapy; psychoanalysis used to be referred to as "the talking cure."

And Zack has dug up strong evidence in favor of "rap":

According to the Gigography, on 30 November 1997 in Stoke: "If only the shards would reconnect in a rap-sort of style. If only, in a Snoop Doggy Dogg style."

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5. On the XFM session from 1999-04-15 MES says "Where blood flows, you will surely see..." This seems suggestive of menstrual blood, as the name Eve sometimes denotes something like the archetypal woman, as Eve in the Bible was the first woman; in Hebrew the word "Chavah" (Eve) means "living," and "where blood flows" could likewise denote any living thing...

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Ten Houses of Eve: Fall Tracks A-Z

The Story of the Fall: 1997