| Hypertext сollected works of Daniel and Alla Andreevs in The Rose of the World's casket |
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Book 3. The structure of Shadanakar: Worlds of Ascent. Chapter 1. The Sakwala of Enlightment. Chapter 2. The Zatomis.
Chapter 3. The Middle Planes of Shadanakar. Chapter 1. The Demonic Base. Chapter 2. The Worlds of Retribution. Chapter 3. Shrastrs and Witzraors. |
I have at times met people who have the same kind of cracklike opening in their deep memory, but not one of them has summoned the courage to speak of it with any but those closest to them. It has never even occurred to them to attempt to set those recollections down in writing. What has prevented them was both a conviction that such disclosures would evoke only ridicule and the natural diffidence of the inner self, which shrinks from holding up to the judgment of skeptical strangers what is intimate, inviolate, and at the same time unverifiable. For a long time I, too, viewed the matter in the same light, and even now I am undertaking the task without the least pleasure. But since positively everything I speak of in this book comes from the same unverifiable source, I see no reason to remain silent about the breaches in my deep memory. I should either have not begun the book at all or, once having started, I should, despite my apprehensions, speak of everything. In addition, I am encouraged by the hope that those readers who do not trust me stopped reading during the first chapters and that only people who are favorably disposed will continue to read further.
My last death occurred approximately three hundred years ago in a country at the head of a different, very old, and powerful metaculture. I have suffered my entire present life, since earliest childhood, from homesickness for my former homeland. It may be that I feel that homesickness so strongly and deeply because I lived not one but two lives in that country, and very full lives at that. But in departing from Enrof three hundred years ago, I was, for the first time in my entire journey through Shadanakar, free of the obligation of expiatory descents after death to the depths of planes where sinners unravel – sometimes for centuries, even millennia – the karmic knots they tie during their lives. For the first time, I succeeded in unraveling the knots in time – that is, while still in Enrof – having paid for the wrongs and mistakes of my youth with long years of suffering and painful personal losses. For the first time, I died with a light heart, though according to the religious beliefs of that country a truly horrific afterlife should have been awaiting me. But I already knew that, through expulsion from my caste and a forty-year life lived among the pariahs, I had atoned for everything. My death was replete with serenity and hope.
It was a prophetic hope, the kind that does not deceive. To the present day, I have been unable to recall anything about the first hours, even the first few days, of my new existence. But I do remember some sections of the new plane on which I existed for a long time afterward.
Although it is common to all the metacultures, this plane differs widely from one metaculture to another. In the ancient, tropical, immense metaculture that twice played host to my life on Earth, it resembled the metaculture's natural environment in Enrof, only milder, without its extremes of harshness and splendor, without its violent tropical storms and the deadly aridity of its deserts. I remember white clouds of unusually full and glorious forms on the horizon, towering almost motionless up to the middle of the sky. Days and nights passed, and still the gigantic, radiant towers hovered there, their outlines barely changing. The sky was not light or dark blue, but a deep green. And the sun there was more beautiful than here. It glittered with slowly and smoothly alternating colors, and I am unable to explain why the color of the light source had no effect on the color of what the light illuminated: the landscape looked almost the same as ours, the dominant colors being green, white, and gold.
There were rivers and lakes. There was an ocean, though I never did get a chance to see it: once or twice I made it only as far as the shore of a sea. There were mountains, forests, and wide open spaces reminiscent of the steppe. But the vegetation in these areas was almost transparent and as sparse as in the northern forests of Enrof in late spring, when plants have only just begun to don their leafy mantle. The mountain ranges and even the soil were just as airy and translucent, as if they were the ether bodies of those elements whose physical bodies we know so well in Enrof.
But there was no trace of bird, fish, or animal. Humans were the sole inhabitants. I say "humans," meaning not such as we are while in Enrof but such as we become after death in the first of the worlds of Enlightenment. On that plane I at last discovered firsthand that the comfort older religions offer us in the prospect of being reunited with loved ones in the afterlife is neither fable nor delusion, but it occurs only if our actions during our lifetime do not draw us down to the woeful planes of atonement. Some of my loved ones were there waiting to welcome me, and whole periods of my life on that plane were taken up by the joy of being with them. The plane is a very old one, at one time having been the home of the angelic protohumankind. It is called Olirna, and that melodious word seems to me a fitting choice for its name. Being with loved ones did not give rise to any of the tension, sorrow, petty worries, or misunderstandings that tarnish it here. The experience was true communion, sometimes accompanied by speech, but more often by silence, the kind we know here only at especially tender moments with the few to whom we are joined by an especially deep love.
Our life was entirely free of worries about the daily necessities of life, worries that play such a pivotal role in Enrof. The mildness of the climate eliminated any need for shelter. That may not be true in the Olirna of some other metacultures, but I cannot say for sure. The wonderful vegetation served as food, and springs and brooks, which, as I recall, tasted different from our water, served as drink. Clothing-or rather, that beautiful, living, softly glowing material that we try to replace in Enrof with garments of wool, silk, or linen – was produced by our very own body, by that same ether body of which we are here almost never aware, but which in the afterlife becomes just as visible and seems just as vital as the physical body is for us. Life is impossible without it both in the worlds of Enlightenment and in Enrof.
Nevertheless, my first while in Olirna was clouded by thoughts of those I had left behind in Enrof. I had left behind children and grandchildren, friends, and my elderly wife – the woman I treasured above all other people in Enrof, the woman for whom I had violated the laws of caste and become an untouchable. After our separation, I was constantly beset by anxiety for their fates, but I soon learned to distinguish their figures through the haze as they stumbled down thorny paths in Enrof. Some time later, it was my turn to welcome my wife, as young as she had once been, only more beautiful. Her journey in Enrof had come to an end a few years after mine, and now there was nothing to tarnish the joy of our reunion.
One after another new sense organs came unblocked: not those organs of sight and hearing that in the ether body coincide exactly with the corresponding organs of the physical body. No! These organs of sight and hearing had been working since the first minutes of my arrival, and it was with them that I perceived Olirna. What came unblocked were those organs we call spiritual vision, spiritual hearing, and deep memory; what the wisest of the wise strive to unblock in Enrof and what is successfully unblocked by only a few out of millions; what gradually comes unblocked in each one of us in Olirna. Spiritual vision and hearing can penetrate the partitions between many planes. It was with them that I perceived the life of those I had left behind on Earth – as yet hazily, but perceived nonetheless.
I enjoyed spending time in the enlightened natural surroundings – never have I seen such picturesque beauty in Enrof. But strangely enough, I felt there was something missing, and soon I realized what: a variety of life. With sadness I recalled the singing and chirping of birds, the buzzing of insects, the darting of fish, the graceful bodies and unconscious wisdom of the higher animals. Only then did I realize how much the animal world means for us and our relationship with nature. However, I was assured by those who knew more than I that humanity's ancient, vague dream about the existence of planes where animals are enlightened and intelligent is not a dream at all but an intuition of the truth. In time I, too, would be able to enter those planes.
Later-quite recently in fact-I was reminded about certain areas in the Olirna of all metacultures. They are regions that resemble rolling steppe, and those who were too engrossed in their own personal growth in Enrof, whose karmic knots have been unraveled but whose soul is too constricted and cramped, remain there for a time. Now nothing prevents them from redressing that inner imbalance amidst the transparent, silent hills and under the magnificent sky, absorbing the rays and voices of the cosmos and stretching the limits of their everexpanding selves.
I was also reminded about areas in Olirna that resemble alpine country. Those who were able only after death to believe in-or to be more precise, to personally experience-the existence of a different reality, work on themselves there, in the valleys. From down below, they gaze up to the mountaintops, mountains that appear not as we see them but in their spiritual glory. The powerful spirits that hold sway there pour forth into the gazers streams of their own energy. And the faculties of the gazers' souls, which had been paralyzed by a lack of faith, come unblocked over days and years of direct contemplation of the multiplaned universe and of the glorious majesty of other worlds. But I have no clear recollection of all that, perhaps because I was only a guest there. Also, I cannot be entirely sure from the source of the information that the information itself was not simplified and thus distorted to facilitate my understanding of it.
Besides enjoying nature and the company of humans, I also spent time working on my own body. I needed to prepare it for transformation, as the path out of Olirna to the next, higher worlds lies not through death but through transfiguration. I understood that the verses in the Gospel that tell of the Ascension of Jesus Christ hint at something similar. His Resurrection from the dead altered the nature of His physical body. Upon His ascension out of Olirna, it was transfigured a second time, together with the ether body. I, like everyone else, was to undergo the transfiguration of my ether body alone, a transfiguration similar to the one the Apostles once saw with vision that penetrated into Olirna but could not yet reach the worlds lying beyond. How else could the Evangelists have expressed the passage of our Savior from Olirna to higher planes if not by calling the event His Ascension into heaven? And I, raised under strict Brahmanism, began to understand what strange and inexhaustible truth the Christian myth contained.
The image of the great betrayer, which I had hitherto taken to be mere legend, became reality in my eyes. I learned that he lives there in total seclusion, on a desert island amidst the seas of Olirna. His journey through the planes of torment took more than sixteen centuries. He was hurled down to the deepest of them all by the weight of his karma, a karma unparalleled in its gravity, and neither before nor after did he encounter a solitary human being. He was subsequently raised by the One he had betrayed on Earth, but only after the Betrayed had attained in His afterlife the incredible spiritual strength needed for it, strength that no one in Shadanakar had ever attained before. Raised higher and higher up the stairway of purgatories by the forces of Light, he finally reached Olirna, having atoned in full for his betrayal. Having not yet had any contact with its inhabitants, he is preparing himself on the island for his further ascent. I saw the island from a distance: it has a forbidding appearance. Strange cliffs, the tops of which all point in one direction, rise upon it. The tops are jagged, and the cliffs are a dark color, even black in places. But no one in Olirna has seen Judas himself: only the glow from his vigils can be seen above the island at night. In the future, when the rule of the one whom it has become customary to call the Antichrist has begun in Enrof, Judas, accepting an important mission from the hands of the Betrayed, will be born again on Earth and, after performing his task, will die a martyr's death at the hands of the Prince of Darkness.
But I am unable to say through what exact efforts I arrived at my own transformation and what actually happened to my body at that moment. At present, I am only able to recall what then took place before my eyes: a crowd of people, perhaps hundreds, gathered to see me off on my journey upward. The attainment of transformation by anyone living in Olirna is always a cause for, celebration for others as well; a bright and joyous atmosphere surrounds the event. As I recall, it took place in the afternoon, on a height like a hill and, as with everything else in Indian Olirna, in the open air. I remember the rows of human faces turned toward me slowly beginning to blur as they seemingly receded into the distance, though it must have been I rising above the ground who was moving away from them. I could see a mountain range far away on the horizon, translucent as ever, as if it were of crystallite. Suddenly I noticed that the mountains had begun to radiate a marvelous light. Quivering rainbows crisscrossed the low horizon, out of nowhere wondrous luminaries of different colors appeared high above me, and the resplendent sun could not outshine them. I remember experiencing a mixed feeling of breathtaking beauty, incomparable joy, and astonishment. When my gaze wandered down, I saw that the crowd of well-wishers was no longer there beneath me; it was a different landscape altogether, and I realized that the moment of my passage to the next, higher plane was already past.
I had earlier been told that my stay on that plane would be very short, as all those passing through it leave after only a few hours. But during those hours the entire plane-it is called Faer-would be immersed in rejoicing for me, who had reached it. It is a great celebration prepared for every ascending soul – not only for human souls but also for those of other monads of Shadanakar that are climbing the stairway of Enlightenment, even those of higher animals. Faer is in a certain sense a parting of the ways: reincarnations in Enrof can still take place afterward, but only when there is a definite mission to perform. Subsequent falls or revolts are not precluded. Neither is a deeply conscious – and thus all the more grave – betrayal of God. A blind fall, however, will never be possible again, and spiritual paralysis is struck from the list of potentialities forevermore. This spiritual paralysis, which manifests itself in the psyche of those living, has through the centuries changed its complexion and name in Enrof. In our century it is primarily, but not exclusively, defined as materialism.
If one searches for a familiar image even distantly analogous to what one sees in Faer, it is impossible to settle for anything less than a holiday fireworks display. There is hardly a need to add that the most lavish fireworks display on Enrof compared to Faer are no more than a few lamps compared to the constellation Orion.
I saw a great many beings in their doubly and triply enlightened forms. They had come there from higher planes out of a desire to share in my joy. The enlightened are capable of sharing others'joy to an incomparably greater degree and intensity than we are. Every soul that reaches Faer arouses rejoicing in millions of those who have already passed through it. How can I convey my feelings when I saw hosts of the enlightened rejoicing because I, insignificant I, had reached that world? It was not gratitude, not embarrassed joy, not even shock – it was more like waves of that blissful emotion that causes mortals in Enrof to burst into silent tears.
I do not recall the time or manner of my passage to the next plane. The overpowering experience of Faer brought on a deep exhaustion and a relaxation, as it were, of the tissue of my entire soul. Everything that I can now reconstruct from my memory of the experiences at the next stage of my ascent can be reduced to a single state, yet one that lasted very long, perhaps for many years.
Radiant calm. Does it not sound like a contradiction in terms? We associate an abundance of light with activity, not rest – with movement, not calm. But that is here, in Enrof. It is not like that everywhere. Besides, the word "radiant" itself is not as precise as I would like. For the light of this next plane, called Nertis, is radiant and at the same time inexpressibly gentle. It combines the enchanting softness of moonlit nights with the bright airiness of blue springtime skies. As if lulled by something more soothing than the softest music, I sank into a contented sleep, feeling like a child who, after months of neglect, suffering, and undeserved pain, is cradled in his or her mother's lap. Feminine tenderness permeated everything, even the air, but it radiated with particular warmth from those who hovered around me, like caregivers who look after the sick and weary with inexhaustible love. They were beings who had earlier risen to even higher planes and had descended from there to Nertis, to such as me, to perform works of tenderness, love, and joy.
Nertis is the land of great rest. Imperceptibly, without any efforts on my part, but as a result only of the work of the friends of my heart, my ether body slowly underwent changes, becoming ever lighter, more permeated with spirit, and more obedient to my wishes. It is in Nertis that our ether body acquires the form it takes in the zatomis, the heavenly lands of metacultures. And if the loved ones I had left behind in Enrof could have seen me, they would have known it was I. They would have caught an elusive resemblance between my new appearance and the one they were familiar with, but they would have been astounded to the bottom of t heir hearts by the otherworldly brightness of my transfigured self.
What remained from before? My facial features? Yes, but now they shone with everlasting, unearthly youth. The organs of my body? Yes, but two soft blue flowers, as it were, glowed on my temples-my organs of spiritual hearing. My brow seemed to be decorated with a magical glittering jewel-my organ of spiritual sight. My organ of deep memory, located in the brain, was not visible. The changes that my internal organs underwent were also not visible, as all those adapted to feeding and procreation either disappeared altogether or were subjected to radical changes and took on new functions. Eating resembled breathing, and I replenished my energy by absorbing radiations of Light emanating from the elementals. Procreation as we know it is not to be found in any of the worlds of ascent. There is something else, and I will speak of it when we have reached the chapter on Heavenly Russia.
After a long period of time, I began to feel with joy my strength growing ever greater, as if mysterious and long-awaited
wings were opening. The reader should not take me too literally: I am not referring to anything resembling the wings of flying beings on Enrof. I refer to the ability to move freely through four-dimensional space. It was still only something to look forward to – immobility lay on me as before – but the possibility of flight turned from a vague dream into a definite prospect.
I learned from the friends of my heart that my stay in Nertis was drawing to a close. It seemed to me that the cradle-like something in which I was resting began slowly to swing up and down, as it were, with every swing higher than the previous one. The motion aroused in me an eagerness to taste the even greater happiness I was soon to experience, and I realized that I was already on another plane, in Gotimna, the last of the worlds in the sakwala of Enlightenment. It was filled with gigantic flowers, as it were, whose size did not deprive them of a wonderful softness, and the spaces between them revealed endless heights and expanses of nine colors. All I can say about the two colors that lie outside our spectrum is that the impression produced by one of them is closest to a sky blue, and the impression from the other is distantly reminiscent of our gold.
Entire forests of the enormous flowers of Gotimna bob up and down, swing and sway, making sounds of unimaginable rhythm. Their rustling is like the softest of music, never wearying, as peaceful as the sound of forests on Earth. Yet it is full of inexhaustible meaning, affectionate love, and concern for all those living there. We moved with a lightness and ease no being in Enrof is capable of approaching, gliding, as it were, between the singing flowers in any one of the four directions of space or pausing to talk with them, for we came to understand their language and they understood ours. There, in sky-blue meadows or next to huge, softly glittering gold petals, we were visited by those who descend to Gotimna from the zatomis to prepare us, their younger brothers and sisters, for the next legs of our journey.
Gotimna is called the Garden of Higher Fate, for the destiny of souls for a long time to come is decided there. I arrived at a crossroads, one that lies on the path of all who ascend to that plane. For many centuries afterward it is impossible to change.
That was the path I chose. I understood that I had agreed to shoulder a burden that would be impossible for me ever to throw off without serious repercussions for myself and others.
From the Indian Gotimna I was taken to the Russian Gotimna, where preparation for the mission my higher self had undertaken was to be completed. But falls, revolts, and betrayals are possible after moral lives of Light as well, because what slept in the sunlight can later awaken in the soul. Such falls also took place on my journey after Gotimna. I will have to shed light on that, however, in other chapters of the book. Now it is time to speak of the zatomis, the heavenly lands of the metacultures.
I have been able to speak of the sakwala of Enlightenment on the basis of what I have been able to recall from experience. In contrast, my memory contains only infrequent, sporadic images of the zatomis sakwala, images imprinted in my mind much later, during the transphysical travels I made while asleep here, in the Enrof of Russia. Those hazy images were supplemented by another, invaluable source of information: transphysical meetings and talks. The autobiographical style is not suited to the presentation of this material. Thus, the following chapters will unfortunately be formal and dry, like the chapter on points of departure.
3.2 The Zatomis
THE SUMMITS OF METACULTURES, the zatomis, to a certain extent follow the geographical contours of their respective cultures in Enrof. All zatomis have four dimensions, but they each differ in their number of time streams. The materiality of the sakwala is created by the Principalities, one of the angelic hierarchies. The zatomis themselves are slowly built through the combined efforts of hierarchies, heroes, geniuses, saints, and a broad spectrum of people capable of creative work, both while the suprapeople that produced them continues its historical journey and after, when that journey comes to an end and millions of its immortal monads continue to ascend from one height of universal knowledge and creative work to another. Each of the zatomis was founded by a great human spirit.
From a distance the planes bear a remote resemblance to our natural environment. The natural element on Earth that best describes the zatomis landscape is clouds in the sky. Regions of soft mist glowing with an inner light are the equivalent of our oceans and seas. They are the souls of marine elementals. The place of rivers of Enrof is taken by the rivers' own souls, forms of inexpressible beauty to which the words "shimmering mists" do not do justice. The vegetation bears little resemblance to ours: it is the souls of elementals, which we will speak of later. I think it sufficient for now to state that the souls of some elementals abide in the zatomis in the intervals between incarnations.
The alternation of night and day takes place on the planes in the exact same manner as here, resulting as it does from the identical rotation of the planet on its axis. The weather fluctuates between pleasant and gorgeous.
Higher humankind – the Synclites of metacultures – is our hope, our joy, our buttress, and our aspiration. Saints, as well as some visionaries and heroes, enter the zatomis almost immediately after their death in Enrof, quickly passing through the worlds of Enlightenment. History makes no mention of the overwhelming majority of such souls, those who lived quiet lives among the people, leaving no traces in chronicles or legend but only in the memory of those who knew them or heard of them from eyewitnesses. They are the unsung heroes of our life. To think otherwise – in other words, to picture the Synclite of a metaculture as a kind of"celebrity" gathering – would only go to show that our moral-mystical mind is still fast asleep.
Others, in particular the recipients of special gifts, who have fallen into the depths of purgatories after death are raised up by the forces of Light, which shorten the duration of their expiatory cleansing so they may join the Synclite. Some geniuses of the arts, many visionaries and heroes, and all saints unraveled their karmic knots while still in Enrof, having expiated the weight of their sins. For them, death was a wide-open gate to the zatomis.
Death caught others still burdened, and thus unprepared, for the higher planes. Such people must first pass through a series of planes in the upper purgatories (upper relative to the terrible circles of magma and the Earth's core, but lower relative to where we are). After finally reaching Gotimna, thousands of those souls do not choose to descend anew to Enrof, choosing instead to work and contribute to the great struggle from within the zatomis communities.
A third group of people did not burden their souls in Enrof with any mortal sins, but their outlook, the scope of their knowledge, and their sense of the cosmic – expanded though they were in Olirna – need to grow still more. For them departure from Olirna marks the beginning of travels, sometimes long, lasting even centuries, until they are capable of internalizing the tasks and wisdom of their Synclite. Thus, from the time of their death in Enrof until they join the Synclite, these souls do not undergo atonement but the expansion and enrichment of their selves.
Reincarnation is far from a universal law. The majority of monads do proceed along that path, however. They have already undergone a number of births among different peoples in Enrof, in different metacultures, even in different millennia in different corners of the globe, and many of them journeyed through other dominions of Shadanakar before their human cycle. Their shelts could even have presided over beings of the plant or animal worlds. Others have experienced, in times immemorial, incarnations as Titans, protoangels, or daemons. Recollections of their garland of births are stored in their deep memory, and the spiritual stature of such monads is especially great, the well of their memories is especially deep, and their future wisdom is distinguished by particular breadth. All recipients of a higher gift of artistic genius have woven such garlands of past reincarnations. Saints of Christian metacultures, unlike the saints of some Eastern metacultures, embark primarily on a different journey of ascent, one that brings them to Enrof but once. But during travels through other planes, that journey reveals to their eyes such heights of the universe that the memory burns within them like a star, and its rays disentangle their hearts from all webs of darkness during their one life in Enrof.
The activities of the Synclites are boundless in variety and scope and are in many respects beyond our power to comprehend. I can point to three branches of their activities: help, creative work, and struggle.
Help is for everyone who has not yet reached the zatomis. The angels of darkness, keepers of the purgatories, would not release their victims for centuries to come if not for the tireless efforts of the Synclites. Those suffering in the horrifying worlds of the magma and the Earth's core would be imprisoned there right up until the third global period. (We are now only approaching the end of the first.) If it were not for the Synclites, those living in Enrof would be encased in an almost impenetrable shell of spiritual darkness.
But that work – rescuing and relieving some, protecting and enriching others, and enlightening still others – is only one branch. Another branch is the creation of independent things of value, the significance of which cannot be exaggerated. But contemplating, let alone understanding, the works of the Synclitesis possible for us only to a minimal degree. To convey their meaning using our concepts is completely out of the question.
Somewhat easier to grasp is the third branch of the Synclites's activities: their struggle with the demonic powers. One might say that they fight in the literal sense, but their weapons, of course, do not have a single thing in common with weapons in Enrof. They vary greatly according to both the degree of control they have over one's own being and those against whom they are directed. They all operate on the same principle, however, which is the concentration of volitional radiations to paralyze the adversary. Synclite members cannot die in battle. In the case of defeat, what can happen is prolonged captivity in the dungeons of demonic strongholds.
The zatomis landscapes are dotted with a sort of equivalent of cities. They bear little resemblance to ours, however, especially since there is no housing in the strict sense of the word. The buildings there serve a very special function: they are primarily meeting places for Synclite members and the spirits of other hierarchies from other worlds. The buildings where their enlightened meetings with monads of elementals take place are called sheritals.
Zatomis architecture is nevertheless suggestive of styles we are familiar with, only raised to an incomparably higher level. It is the result of two parallel processes that are difficult, but necessary, to understand. It so happens that the great architectural masterpieces of Enrof, in being saturated with the radiations of many human psyches, acquire a soul, or more precisely, an astral body. These astral bodies abide in the zatomis. But there are also buildings in the zatomis that have no twin in Enrof, for example, these same sheritals. There are also those structures that builders in Enrof envisioned, designed, and set about constructing on Earth, but history placed insurmountable barriers in their path.
Synclite members can penetrate as far down as the magma in the worlds of descent and can rise up to very high planes known as the Highest Aspects of the Transmyths of the Global Religions.
Oral communication takes place in each zatomis in the transfigured language of the corresponding country in Enrof, but it is a language both of sound and light. There would be nothing strange in applying our concept of"vocabulary" to these languages, but their vocabulary, with its distinct, incomparably richer store of concepts, differs greatly from ours. Besides these metacultural languages, there is also a lingua franca: the names of the planes, beings, and hierarchies have their origin in it. The speed and ease with which foreign languages are mastered there cannot be compared to the same process in Enrof, for it takes place effortlessly, by itself.
It is customary to call the zatomis lingua franca the language of the World Synclite, though the name is not entirely accurate: the World Synclite, which we will speak of much later, possesses methods of communication that have nothing in common with any kind of oral language. But the members of the World Synclite descended from their heights to the zatomis of metacultures to oversee the creation of a common zatomis language, and that is why the provisional name of the language is associated with them.
Besides the Synclites, other beings abide in the zatomis: future angels. They are wondrous creations of God, and if we recall the Sirins and Alkonosts of Russian legends, we will approach an image of those whose presence adorns life in the Byzantine and Russian zatomis, an image of beings destined later to become "solar archangels." Other beings, no less beautiful, abide in other zatomis.
There are nineteen zatomis, and I shall say something here of each.
Maif is the oldest of zatomises, the heavenly land and Synclite of the Atlantis metaculture, which existed in Enrof from approximately the twelfth to the ninth millennium B.C.
Atlantis was an archipelago; the largest and most important of its islands approached Sicily in size. It was populated by a socalled Red people. It was a slave-based society, which at first comprised a number of lesser states that were later unified under a dictatorship. Its worldview was polytheistic, with an important role reserved for magic. Its pantheon of gods and religious life were tainted by devil worship. Of those cultures known to us, Atlantis most closely resembled Egypt and, in part, the Aztec civilization, only grimmer. Architecture, sculpture, and dance were the principal art forms. Their civilization could by no means be called advanced, though the Atlanteans, taking advantage of the chain of small islands running between Atlantis and America, maintained contact with the continent of their origin. Later they were to reach West Africa, and the legend of Atlantis subsequently came to Egypt via the ancient Sudanese civilization, which remains unknown to this day but whose ruins may still be unearthed in the future. Images of merciless and greedy divinities left their mark on the moral code of the Atlanteans, and ritual cannibalism played an important role in their religious life. In a late period of its history, semi-esoteric religious movements of Light emerged. But because of the active presence of the demonic, the overall spiritual picture was rather bleak.
The main island and the smaller ones surrounding it were destroyed by a series of catastrophic earthquakes. A few small groups of inhabitants escaped to America, and one group to Africa, where it was assimilated into the black
At present, Maif, which has already existed for almost fifteen millennia over a certain section of the Atlantic Ocean, has attained immense power of Light.
Its emblem consists of a red temple on a black background; four white-clad figures stand in front of the temple with arms upraised.
The figures represent the cults of the four divinities of Light. It was through these cults that spirituality flowed down into the Atlantis culture.
Linat is the name of the zatomis of Gondwana, by which I mean not the ancient continent that existed in the Indian Ocean long before the emergence of humans but rather the metaculture whose centers in Enrof were Java, Sumatra, South Hindustan, and certain cities that now lie on the ocean floor. The Gondwanese culture existed as late as the sixth millennium B.C.
This culture was composed of a federation of states – a commercial oligarchy with a slave-based economy. In addition, the advanced state of Gondwanese marine navigation enabled it to establish commercial and cultural links with the coast of Indochina, Ceylon, and many Indonesian islands. As in Atlantis, polytheism was dominant, as were the same three art forms, though in Gondwana dance developed into religious drama. But the bloodthirstiness and demonic, mystic cruelty of the Atlanteans was alien to Gondwana. They were a sensuous, sanguine, lifeloving people, richly gifted in the arts, and possessed of a very active sex life. Sexual mysticism permeated both their religious and everyday life, and attained genuine sumptuousness at the civilization's height. Not Atlantis, not even Babylon or Egypt knew such luxury. It seems to me that the Gondwanese race could be called proto-Malaysian. In any case, taut, brown' skin covered their high cheekbones and full lips, their oblong eyes were slightly slanted, and their bodies were well proportioned and muscular, with broad shoulders, slender waists, and very strong calves. They were a people blessed with the full-blooded and passionate beauty of the south.
Some millennia later, the Indo-Malaysian culture arose in the same region, which in some ways resembled its predecessors, but was much more spiritually mature.
The emblem of Linat is a violet-clad woman and a green-clad man on a gold background. They are under the lower half of a red sun, their arms around each other's shoulders.
Violet here represents a mix of dark blue and red. Dark blue symbolizes the powers of Universal Femininity, Whose emanation into the Gondwanese metaculture marked the first time in the existence of humanity that such an event had taken place with such intensity. Red symbolizes the elements – not the elementals of Nature but the extremely active presence of certain elementals linked with humanity. Green represents the same intense activity by elementals of Nature. Gold is the hieratic background that speaks of the already developed spiritual reality existing behind the suprapeople.
Ialu is the zatomis of the metaculture of Ancient Egypt. (If I remember correctly, it also has another name, which sounds something like Atkheam.) This culture, which utterly eclipsed Atlantis in size and splendor, had created, even before the end of its historical existence, a huge Synclite and dazzling zatomis.
The demonic powers, however, dealt it a serious blow in the fourteenth century B.C., when the Providential powers, operating through the great visionary leader and prophet Akhenaton, made the first attempt in world history to enlighten the minds of the people with the truth of the One God. If Akhenaton's reforms had succeeded and met with worthy successors Christ would have undertaken His mission several centuries earlier, and he would have done so not on the banks of the Jordan but in the Nile River valley.
I would like to mention that the Egyptian belief in the Heavenly Nile was based on experience of a higher reality. The magnificent river flowing through Ialu, the mythical Land of the Blessed – that is, the metaculture's zatomis – is multiplaned: it is both the great spiritualized elemental of the terrestrial Nile and the Collective Ideal Soul of the Egyptian people.
The emblem of Ialu depicts a white barge with sails on a blue river that flows into the sun.
Eanna is the zatomis of the ancient Babylonian-Assyrian-Canaanite metaculture, which arose, it appears, in the fourth millennium B.C. The seven-tiered temples-observatories, which were the centers and pinnacles of the great cities of the Tigris-Euphrates region, mirrored, like a terrestrial reflection, the grandiose heavenly city built by the Synclite of the zatomis. But the ziggurats in the cities of Babylonia and the collective of initiates who absorbed the radiations of the cosmic powers of Light on top of their mystical observatories were also not shielded from the extremely harmful radiations coming from the galactic anticosmos, whose center in Enrof is located in the Antares system. That tainted the already ambivalent religion even more and injected a subtle poison into the essence of those exposed, encrusting and weighting their inner self with doubt and pessimism.
The Babylonian metaculture was the first in which Gagtungr was able to effect the incarnation of a Witzraor, a powerful demonic being, in the subterranean four-dimensional plane bordering the Babylonian shrastr. The descendants of that demon have played and continue to play a huge and deadly role in the metahistory of humanity. To a significant degree the Witzraor was to blame for the general spiritual decline that distinguished the culture in Enrof. And although Ereshkigal, the goddess of the underworld, was defeated in the end by Astarte, the goddess of Light, who, in a burst of sacrificial love, descended to the Babylonian transphysical planes of torment, their beliefs about the afterlife of all human souls, excluding those of kings and priests, was nevertheless steeped in a pessimistic, almost nihilistic
despondency: it was an intuitive understanding of the paralyzing power of the demonic.
The emblem of Eanna pictures a seven-tiered white ziggurat. The seven stories represent the seven planes that were clearly intuited by the religious consciousness of the Babylonian suprapeople.
Shan Ti is the zatomis of the Chinese metaculture, which has existed in Enrof since the second millennium B.C. It began to grow significantly in strength in the last centuries prior to Christ, when Confucianism created a lasting code of morality and everyday conduct that enabled the people's overall moral level to rise. However, a very low ceiling was placed on the free development of the higher aspects of the soul. Confucianist law, in gradually fossilizing, became not so much a vehicle for ascent as a brake to it. This explains why the size and strength of the Chinese zatomis, in spite of its long history, are not as great as one would expect. Another zatomis that coexists with Shan Ti encroached upon geographical China after the spread of Buddhism. In the last few centuries it has admitted many more enlightened souls than the national zatomis.
The emblem of Shan Ti is the face of a beautiful woman wearing a lotus-shaped crown.
Sumera, or Meru, (I do not know which of these names should be considered correct) is the zatomis of the Indian metaculture, the most powerful of all zatomis in Shadanakar. In earliest mythology, the summit of Mount Sumera was topped by the city of Brahma and the cities of other Hindu deities were on its slopes. But Heavenly India was not limited to them, for it encompassed several large tracts of land separated by water.
At present Heavenly India overlooks a geographical area of Enrof that stretches far beyond the borders of the Indian state.
Over the course of 4,000 years the spiritual life of the Indian peoples, who are exceptionally gifted in the religious sense, has resulted in two metacultures separating from it and becoming independent systems of planes. In the meantime, Heavenly India itself has been reinforced by such a huge number of enlightened that by the twentieth century the influence of its Synclite had come to outweigh the power of all the demonic forces combined. India is the only culture in Enrof that has unwaveringly developed along a high moral path. Much earlier the power of the Indian Synclite prevented the forces of Gagtungr from creating, as they did in the other metacultures, planes of eternal torment. Before Christ, it was the one metaculture with purgatories and the only one whose lower extremity did not extend as far as the magmas.
Meru has two major centers – one above the Himalayas and one above the Nilgiri mountains in central India – and a host of lesser ones. In addition, the Indian Synclite possesses a stable base of support in Enrof in the form of a fluid collective of people that moves along a kind of geographical curve from age to age. Prior to the Second World War it was located in Pamir, and it is now located in south India.
The landscape of Heavenly India resembles that of Heavenly Russia, but the natural environment is lusher. Both the tropical character of the corresponding countries in Enrof and the zatomis' longer history account for this. The Heavenly Ganges, which has the same double meaning for the Indian metaculture as the Heavenly Nile has for Egypt, flows through the entire zatomis.
The emblem of Sumeru depicts three white mountain chains, each higher than the previous one, each topped by golden cities. The first chain is the zatomis, and the second and third are very high worlds, the highest aspect of the Hindu transmyth.
Zurvan is the zatomis of the ancient Iranian (Zoroastrian) metaculture.
The insufficiently precise formulation of the idea of the One God in this nevertheless lofty and pure religion did not allow it to lay the necessary groundwork for Christ's mission to take place in Iran. A later attempt by the Iranian metaculture to make up for that failure through the creation of a new international religion – Manichaeanism – ended in a second failure, when demonic emanations gained access to the creative consciousness of its founders. By the time of the Muslim conquest, the Iranian culture had exhausted its forward momentum. During the centuries that followed, its only base of support in Enrof has been a Parsi community in India. As one would expect, the number of people entering Zurvan through the worlds of Enlightenment is now extremely small, while Zurvan itself has almost detached from its geographical area in Enrof.
Zurvan's emblem: a sacrificial altar with a burning fire.
Olympus is the zatomis of the ancient Greco-Roman metaculture. The name Olympus refers both to the center of the zatomis, a great city of the enlightened that is indeed connected to the geographical site of Mount Olympus, and to the entire heavenly land of the Greco-Roman metaculture. Having been, at the time of ancient Greece and Rome, the abode and theater of activity of those nonhuman hierarchies that were reflected in the persona of the Greco-Roman pantheon, the zatomis gradually became, in the millennium after Christ, the abode of the Synclite. The hierarchies that at one time abided there have, in the course of centuries, completed a great journey of ascent. They now abide and work in incomparably higher worlds, and at the same time they overlook Olympus and emanate beneficent energy to its Synclite.
Apollo is the name of the demiurge of the Greco-Roman metaculture. Pallas Athena is the name of the Collective Ideal Soul of the suprapeople.
The emblem of Olympus is a white temple, in the classical style, on a mountain against a blue sky.
Nikhord is the zatomis of the Jewish metaculture. It is the lower plane of the Synclite of Israel.
The great human spirit Abraham was the founder of Nikhord. The ancient teachers of Judaism were inspired by the demiurge of the suprapeople, but the purity of the inspiration was tainted first by elemental emanations from the "genius" of the Sinai mountains and then by emanations from the Jewish Witzraor.
Nonetheless, one should still regard the I of the Old Testament as the Almighty. Monotheism, as the soil without which Christ's task could not be carried out in Enrof, was essential for all humanity. Nikhord was able to instill the idea of the One God into the people's consciousness at the cost of a massive expenditure of energy, which exhausted it for a long time afterward. That is the reason for their not always successful struggle with the demonic and of the tragic nature of Jewish history. In the century that witnessed the life and death of Jesus, that geographically small region was the site of a ferocious battle between the forces of Gagtungr and God. That will be discussed in more detail elsewhere. Christ's Resurrection was greeted in Nikhord with great rejoicing. The attitude of the Jewish Synclite toward the Planetary Logos is the same as in all other zatomis – there can be no question of any other. But the revelation of Christ's truth awaits those in Olirna who are destined to enter Nikhord later. They did not accept this truth while on Earth and it is so astonishing that many are unable to come to terms with it for a long time afterward.
The destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish kingdom gave rise to mourning in Nikhord, but with an awareness of the logic of events. No other fate was possible for the aggressive but weak Jewish Witzraor after it entered into irreconcilable battle with the demiurge of the suprapeople during the years of Christ's mission on Earth. There have been no more Jewish Witzraors since the final defeat of the Jews by Hadrian. But behind the Witzraor stood another, more terrible demonic hierarchy – the spawn of Gagtungr and true rival of the demiurge – which continued to influence Jewry even during the diaspora. Medieval Judaism continued to develop under the influence of two opposing wills: that demon and Nikhord. At present, Nikhord admits a very small number of new members, who do nevertheless enter the worlds of Enlightenment through Judaism. Restoration of the Israel state in the XX century has no relation to Nikhord; the restoring temple is a theatrical performance, no more. The new Israeli witzraor didn’t arise, but the similar role is played by one of beings who will be told in chapter about egregors; the strongest impact from the main den of demonic forces is made on him.
Nikhord's emblem depicts a tentlike structure surrounded by trees with large red fruit. The tent is the Ark of the Covenant, the symbol of the first enduring revelation in history of the One God; the fruit-laden trees are the Promised Land, which awaits the suprapeople not on Earth but in the zatomis.
Paradise is the provisional name of the zatomis of the Byzantine metaculture. Like the other zatomis of Christian metacultures, it is one of the staircases rising from different directions to an extremely high world called Heavenly Jerusalem, which is nothing other than the Higher Aspect of the Christian Transmyth. This will be discussed more a little later.
Paradise is an ancient, powerful plane, a section of which exists in part over Russia as well. Its founder is the great human spirit who in Enrof was John the Baptist.
The victory of Jesus Christ, though only partial, gave rise to a great mobilization of forces in the demonic worlds. In particular, their efforts were aimed at preventing the planes of torment of the Byzantine metaculture from being turned into temporary purgatories. Their efforts were crowned with success, but the end result was the collapse of the Byzantine culture in Enrof. The lack of purgatories and the unavoidable descent by sinners after death to the endless tortures of the magma and core gave rise among the more spiritually gifted of the Byzantine people to a constant feeling of horror toward the most venial sin. To a significant extent that was what led to their extreme asceticism.
Metahistorically, the southern Slavs are located in a transitional area bordering the Byzantine, Russian, Roman Catholic, and Muslim metacultures. Their Synclites are in Paradise.
The emblem of Paradise is of a stream running through a garden in blossom, in which people are clad in golden garments. Their clothing symbolizes the transfigured body, and the color gold represents the body's permeation by the power of the Creator of the Universe.
Eden is the provisional name of the zatomis of the Roman Catholic metaculture, and it is one of the staircases to Heavenly Jerusalem. Several peoples of various ethnic roots belong to the metaculture Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Irish, Croats.
The founder of Eden is the great human spirit who in Enrof was the Apostle Peter.
The emblem is the same as for Paradise, but the dominant color is light blue. Light blue represents the dense permeation of Catholicism by the spirit of Universal Femininity.
Monsalvat is the zatomis of the metaculture of North-Western Europe, North America, Australia, and some
parts of Africa. Geographically, it is the largest and most dispersed of all the zatomis. The founder of Monsalvat is the great human spirit Titurel, who had close ties with Christ long before our Savior's incarnation in Palestine. Like Lohengrin and Parsifal, he is not a fictional hero but a person who did at one time live in Enrof (though not in Palestine). The Holy Grail contains the ether blood that Christ shed on Golgotha.
The division of the planes of Eden and Monsalvat is based for the most part on national and cultural distinctions between the Romanic and Germanic peoples. But the greater or lesser part played by the ecclesiastic or lay segments of the populace led to a host of changes taking place in the afterlife fates of the people of Western Europe, especially since Monsalvat appeared several centuries after Eden. France is in an interim stage; its tragedy lies in the fact that it has no Synclite of its own. Some of the ascending monads from France rise to Eden after death, and others to Monsalvat.
The center of Monsalvat, which had earlier been connected with the Alps, was relocated far to the East at the end of the Middle Ages and is now located near Pamir. (The reasons for this are very complex.) But a host of other, lesser metacities shine above Europe and America. Some of them overlook centers in Enrof that are small in size but spiritually powerful, such as Heidelberg, Cambridge, and Weimar.
Monsalvat's emblem is a Gothic cathedral, white in color, on a mountain peak. In the foreground is a cup glowing red.
Zhunfleya is the zatomis of the Ethiopian metaculture, which for two thousand years has struggled to survive under exceptionally unfavorable historical and geographical conditions: a small island of Christianity between two hostile oceans, Islam and the paganism of African tribes. The metaculture has not been able to realize even one-tenth of its potential. At present, a distressing metahistorical process is taking place: Zhunfleya is being relocated to another sakwala, the sakwala of developmentally arrested metacultures in Enrof. An exceptionally fortunate combination of historical circumstances could still reverse the process.
Its emblem is a white circular building draped in fluttering cloths. The building represents the zatomis, and the cloths represent subtle materiality.
The zatomis of the Islamic metaculture is Jannet. Islam differs from the other global religions in that it lacks a higher aspect of its transmyth – that is, there is no world dedicated specifically to Islam in the very high sakwala of the worlds of the higher transmyths of the global religions. That accounts for the poverty of Muslim mythology, for the lack of originality
of most transphysical images and themes formulated in it, which were borrowed primarily from Judaism and Christianity. Islam, which is in many respects a regression in relation to Christianity, nevertheless offers a soul the possibility of ascent, enables spiritual energy to flow through it into our world, and in the course of its history has created a very bright, if not powerful, zatomis and a dazzling Synclite.
Its emblem is a white mosque between two symmetrically bending palms with people clad in green and white. The mosque represents the zatomis; the palms represent the two chief branches of Islam.
Sukhavati – which is in Buddhist mythology the western paradise of Amitabha Buddha – is the zatomis of the metaculture associated with northern Buddhism, known as the Mahayana. It overlooks Tibet and Mongolia and coexists over China and Japan with Shan-Ti and Nikisaka, the Japanese national zatomis.
Sukhavati separated from its parent Indian metaculture in the ninth century A.D., when the centers of Buddhism moved once and for all out of India into Tibet and China. It particularly grew in strength three to four centuries later, when the Himalayan metaculture, which had had a brilliant beginning, started to show signs of a premature decline, and the leading role of the Tibetan and Chinese centers of Buddhism was reaffirmed.
The zatomis of Sukhavati is one of the most populous and strongest. It is one of two staircases to the high world of the Higher Aspect of the Buddhist Transmyth which is called Nirvana and of which we will speak later.
The emblem of Sukhavati is the sun dawning over lotus flowers.
Aireng-Dalyang is the zatomis of the prodigious Indo-Malaysian metaculture, which is as yet relatively unknown here in Russia. Having separated from the Indian metaculture around the fifth century A.D., it encompassed the Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms of Java, Indochina, and Ceylon, at one point taking historical form as the Shailendra Empire. The metaculture was later seriously weakened both by the succession of Java, which fell under Islamic control, and by predatory demons – the European Witzraors – at the end of the nineteenth century. The metaculture is still smoldering within the Indochinese kingdoms, but a favorable historical climate could give rise to a renewed blossoming.
Its emblem depicts laughing children in the garden of a temple-palace.
Heavenly Russia will be described in more detail than the others a few paragraphs below.
Unfortunately I know virtually nothing about the zatomis of the Black metaculture, not even its name. I know that it is young
and still very weak. After the collapse of the Sudanese culture, together with its religion, which had enabled spirituality to flow down not only among the elite but even among the masses of the Black peoples of equatorial Africa, Blacks were for a long time deprived of the possibility of ascent after death. The possibility arose for them again only a few centuries ago in connection with the fact that some tribes had reached the stage where their hazily formulated polytheistic systems became capable of assimilating the first manifestations of spirituality. The door to an ascending afterlife was opened to the Black peoples to an even greater extent by the spread among them – unfortunately weak – of Islam and Christianity. The founding of Liberia was also of metahistorical significance, establishing as it did a small but stable center of Christian spirituality in equatorial Africa. The Black population of North America is also connected with the Black zatomis. White people rise to the zatomis only in rare instances. Harriet Beecher Stowe, for example, after having reached Monsalvat, left it for the Black zatomis, where her work has for a long time been of great significance, and her position has partly resembled that of a queen and partly that of a high priestess.
Its emblem is a stairway leading from a lake to an orange circular building. The lake represents the materiality of the suprapeople and the building represents the zatomis. The color orange is a blend of the gold of the sun with the scarlet of elementals linked not with the natural realms but with humanity.
The last of the great zatomis is in the midst of construction. It is Arimoya, the future zatomis of the global metaculture, which is connected with the appearance and dominion of the Rose of the World, the future interreligion. As in the other zatomis, the materiality of Arimoya is being created by the Principalities, one of the angelic hierarchies. The great human spirit who was Zoroaster in his last reincarnation on Earth is overseeing the creation of what I will provisionally designate with the term great design.
The emblem of Arimoya is a white, multitowered cathedral, with one main central tower, colonnades, and stairways. It is surrounded by a number of large string instruments resembling golden lyres. The towers represent the zatomis of humanity; the central tower is Arimoya; the colonnades are the worlds of daemons, angels, elementals, and enlightened animals; the lyres represent all the peoples of the Earth.
Heavenly Russia.
Its emblem is a pink-white city of many churches on a high bank overlooking the dark blue bend of a river.
Like the other zatomis, Heavenly Russia, or Holy Russia, is linked with the three-dimensional territory that roughly follows the contours of our country. Its great centers correspond to certain of our
cities; between them are beautiful regions of enlightened nature. The principal center is the Heavenly Kremlin, which overlooks Moscow. Its cathedrals shine with unearthly gold and white. And high above meta-Petersburg, in the clouds of that world, soars the lofty white sculpture of a galloping horseman. It is not intended to be a representation of anyone in particular; it is, rather, a symbol of the direction of our metahistorical journey. Lesser centers are scattered throughout the entire zatomis, including the metacultural summits of other nations that together with Russia form a single suprapeople. There abide the Synclites of the Ukraine, Georgia, and Armenia. Recently the Synclite of the Bulgarian people, along with its own heavenly cities, has begun to merge with the zatomis. I do not know the total population of Heavenly Russia, but I do know that about half a million enlightened souls now abide in the Heavenly Kremlin.
Yarosvet, the Demiurge, takes the form of a transparent ocean of energy in the air of that world, passing from horizon to horizon and flooding all hearts with Light. His power is concentrated in the temples of the demiurge. There he assumes individual features, his voice becomes audible, and interaction takes place between him and the enlightened, interaction that imparts to them strength and higher wisdom.
Another hierarchy similar to the demiurge manifest themselves in the same way. They are the great guiding spirits of the individual nations that are also part of our metaculture. Ones older than Yarosvet can be found among them, as can the young guiding spirit of the Ukraine.
But neither Navna – the Collective Ideal Soul of the Russian people – nor her sisters – the Collective Souls of the other peoples – are there. They are prisoners behind thick walls of state power in the citadel of the Witzraor, the state demon, in the underworld of Russian antihumankind. Only their distant voices and weak light reach Heavenly Russia.
There, seas of glowing ether – the souls of elementals, which shine with colors beyond our imagination – lap against structures that bear a remote resemblance to the azure and white hulks of mountains. The Russian church sings of that world when it sends the deceased on their final journey, so that the Lord may give them rest in "a place of light, a place of plenty, a place of calm, so they may know neither sorrow, nor grief, but life everlasting."
Newcomers to Heavenly Russia materialize in special sanctuaries as children, not infants. Their inner world is similar to that of children. As for aging, it is replaced by growth in enlightenment and spiritual strength. There is neither conception nor birth. Guardians, not parents, make provision for the conditions necessary for the enlightenment of souls rising up from Gotimna.
One can discern in the external appearance of some Synclite members features that their lives in Enrof have made famous: now those features are radiant and dazzling. Rarefied and softened, they shine with spiritual glory. Their clothing, produced by their transfigured body, glows of itself. They move freely in all four directions of space in a manner that is vaguely reminiscent of the soaring of birds, but which surpasses it in ease, freedom, and speed. They have no wings. A great many planes are within the sight and hearing of the enlightened. Among the planes of descent are purgatories, the magma, and terrible Gashsharva. The worlds of Enlightenment, the circles of angels, daemons, and elementals, the worlds of emanations from other bramfaturas, and the worlds of the Higher Aspects of Global Transmyths are among the planes of ascent. Synclite members can enter the dark shrastrs, the worlds of antihumankind, where the inhabitants can see them but are powerless to destroy them. They can enter our Enrof as well, but humans can perceive them only with spiritual sight.
The love between man and woman in Enrof, which is worthy of the title of greatness, continues there as well, growing and deepening, liberated from all things that may burden it here. There is bodily intimacy between some as well, but it has been freed of any procreative function and has nothing whatsoever in common with physical intimacy in Enrof. Many bodily organs have by that time undergone radical alterations in their structure, function, and purpose, including organs concerned with the consumption and digestion of food, since the replenishment of bodily energy there resembles breathing. Growth in spirituality eventually brings the enlightened to the next great transfiguration of the body, which leads to higher worlds, to Heavenly Jerusalem, and still higher – all the way to the World Synclite and the Elite of Shadanakar.
There is nothing in the zatomis resembling our technology; its place is taken by something extremely difficult to grasp. I can nevertheless state with surety that, instead of creating mechanical devices from external matter, it operates on the principle of developing the manifold abilities of one's own essence. There, only that which is to a certain extent comparable to our works of architecture is created from external matter.
The souls of churches that were built on Earth, or were supposed to have been built, gleam everywhere there. Many temples, however, serve a function difficult for us to comprehend. There are sanctuaries for interaction with angels, the World Synclite, daemons, and the upper hierarchies. A few large temples are reserved for meetings with Jesus Christ, Who descends there from time to time, assuming a visible, humanlike form. Other temples are for meetings with the Virgin Mary. A magnificent temple is now being erected, destined to be the sanctum of the Great Feminine Spirit, Who will take on an astral and ether body from the marriage of the Russian demiurge with the Collective Ideal Soul of Russia. I have been accustomed since childhood to calling it the Temple of the Universal Sun, but the name is wrong. It properly refers to a different and even more majestic building, the one destined to be built in Arimoya. As for the temple being erected in the Heavenly Kremlin, it is called the Sanctum of Zventa-Sventana, and I will later explain the meaning of that name. That great Feminine Essence has by now already entered one of the highest worlds of Shadanakar. She will never incarnate physically in Enrof but will be born in Heavenly Russia and assume human form. She will not be our queen or goddess; she will be Light, divine grace, and celestial beauty.
Staircases of wondrous worlds, each visible through the other, rise from the altars in the Temple of Femininity, the Temples of Christ, and the Temples of Yarosvet, the demiurge. The staircases rise up through Heavenly Jerusalem to the threshold of the World Salvaterra.
From time to time, great human spirits are born in Heavenly Russia: those who have completed their journey in Shadanakar, having reached its highest worlds, and who now co-create with the Planetary Logos. They leave the Elite of Shadanakar to help those below and, in order to carry out missions beyond the co~,nprehension of the greatest mystical minds of humanity, they materialize in the zatomis. There they assume the same enlightened bodies as the Synclite members but far surpass them in the speed with which they reach full spiritual maturity and in their inner stature. Their paths in the zatomis resemble the lives of geniuses among the masses of humanity. The Synclites are notified ahead of time of their arrival and await them with gladness and rejoicing.
Those who were geniuses and messengers on Earth continue their work in the zatomis after atonement, enlightenment, and transformations.
The bliss of the Gamayuns and Sirins themselves increases when they see the masterpieces being wrought by great spirits that last walked the Earth in the persons of Derzhavin and Pushkin, Lermontov and Gogol, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Rublev and Surikov, Glinka and Mussorgsky, Kazakov and Bazhenov. Shining waves of inconceivable sounds swell in places as if from out of the heart of the celestial mountains. They usher souls into a state of such spiritual joy that a heart on Earth would burst from it, and, rising and twisting like clouds of glory, they plunge down into love and quiet bliss.
The great architect who at one time undertook construction of the Church of the Body, Soul, and Spirit on the Vorobyov Hills in Moscow, and who lived through the death of his dream, exile, oblivion, and impoverishment, is now at work on the most sacred of all things in the Heavenly Kremlin: the inner chapel of the Sanctum of Zventa-Sventana.
Only a handful of enlightened souls in Heavenly Russia would be recognized by those of us familiar with the history of our Motherland. The names of the rest will mean nothing to us.
In the monasteries of Kievan and Muscovite Russia, as well as in those of later times, quiet souls, not gifted enough to blaze forth like saints, lived their lives unnoticed, silently and humbly contributing in their small way to religious work and to the collective labor of the spirit.
Down the roads of Russia throughout the centuries roamed pilgrims and searchers, raconteurs and minstrels, the anonymous authors of fairy tales and uplifting poetry, of songs and legends, of unrecorded stories, now lost, about the heroes and ideals of those times. The brilliant masters of spinning, engraving, and icon-painting; the carpenters and builders of splendid terems, humble wooden churches, and brightly decorated houses; masons, cabinetmakers, potters, weavers, jewelers, and copiers; people who loved their work and pursued it in studios, shops, monastery cells, and in the open air; whose works, stamped with the joy of the creative process and a passionate love for life, have pleased and delighted entire generations – where else can those creators be and what could they be creating now if not the everlasting treasures of Holy Russia?
Throughout every period in Russian history thousands of peasants – land-clearers, farmers, hired hands, serfs and free alike, have lived simple and pure lives, have carried out the sowing and reaping as a duty laid on them by God, with veneration for and gratitude to Mother Earth, and have died simply and peacefully, believing in God and forgiving everyone.
Throughout those centuries thousands of mothers have borne their cross, raising children worthy of the name "human" and seeing their life's purpose in that calling. Is that not one of the highest forms of creative work?
When schools began to be built, hundreds of people abandoned their customary surroundings and way of life and left for (one could say descended into) the lower levels of society, shutting themselves off for for their whole life in remote areas, amidst chronic ignorance, where there was no one with whom to exchange an intelligent word: all for the sake of educating the uneducated.
And what of medical practitioners who worked one to an entire district? And doctors who displayed their heroism during epidemics? And those revolutionaries who were motivated not by fanaticism, hate, and a thirst for power but by a genuine love for the people and by anguish at seeing their anguish? And those priests who, to the extent the gifts given them by God allowed, were models of a pure and simple life, cultivating in many the best that was in their simple hearts? It is impossible to list all the paths by which travelers on Earth arrive sooner or later at the Synclite. It is only a question of time, of stages still to be passed through on the way to that goal. It is a goal that people are not fully conscious of but that is known to their immortal monads and thus draws them onward.
Oh, it is pointless to imagine Heavenly Russia as a never-ending, monotonous series of solemn liturgies and prayer sessions. We have no idea of the spiritual delights they enjoy there or of the jokes, laughter, and even games, especially among the children.
I could list the names of some Russian cultural and historical figures who have entered Heavenly Russia in the last forty years. Let those-who-will laugh over the information. After all, I have long been accustomed to having a reputation of a lunatic. So here are the names of some of those who did not descend in their afterlife, and instead entered the Synclite through the worlds of Enlightenment immediately upon their death in Enrof: Leskov, Rimsky-Korsakov, Kluchevsky, Gumilov, Voloshin, Rachmaninov, Anna Pavlova, Sergei Bulgakov, John of Kronshtadt, Patriarch Tikhon, Prince Alexci Nikolayevich, several masters of the arts, and thousands of heroes who died at the hands of Stalin. Here are the names of only a very few of those who joined the Synclite after a brief time in the upper purgatories: Fet, L. Andreyev, Alexander Blok, Shalyapin, Alexander II, Konstantin Romanov, Professor Pavlov.
I know, as well, the names of some among the enlightened who have risen to special heights in Heavenly Russia: Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Lev Tolstoy, A.K. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, the Aksakovs, Vitberg, Kutuzov, and Chemezov, a little-known engraver of the eighteenth century who died young.
The following are at present closer than the rest to the great transformation that will raise them to Heavenly Jerusalem and the World Synclite: Lermontov, Vladimir Solovyov, the Emperor Ivan VI, as well as two spirits whose names surprised me but which were twice repeated: Shevchenko and PavelFlorensky.
During the whole existence of the Russian zatomis, a few dozen people have risen through it to the World Synclite. Of these the following names are known to me: Saint Vladimir, Yaroslav the Wise, Antony and Feodosy of Pechery, Nestor the Chronicler, Sergi the soldier, who was the author of The Lay of the Host of Igor, Alexander Nevsky, Sergi of Radonezh, Andrei Rublev, Nil of Sory, Lomonosov, Alexander I, Ambrosius of Optina, and Serafim of Sarov.
Our sight, once it bursts the fetters of our space, can discern the heavenly lands of other metacultures in the distance, beyond the borders of the Russian metaculture, lands just as radiant and full of unique variety. Preparations through love and mutual understanding for the creation of holy Arimoya, the heavenly land of all humanity – that is the bond that now joins the Synclites and cities of different metacultures. The greatest of the children of humanity, after completing their work in their holy cities, leave their metaculture. Rising up to the World Synclite from different directions, as it were, they come together at last, but still long before they have reached that world. The world where they meet is called Gridruttva, the white chamber where they devise the overall plan for the ascent of humanity. Their further ascent takes them to planes where their wisdom and power surpass those of demiurges. The Higher Providential Plan, which we can sometimes distinguish in history as the pattern behind the individual plans of the demiurges, is the product of their creative work. They are the World Synclite. While maintaining full clarity of spiritual consciousness, they co-create with the Planetary Logos Himself.
Work on Arimoya in four-dimensional worlds has only just begun; its historical reflection on Earth will constitute the meaning and goal of the coming century. It is for that very purpose that the energy of the Eternal Virgin Mother, energy that is concentrated within one divine monad, flowed down from transcosmic spheres into the highest planes of Shadanakar. It is also for that purpose that a fabulous temple is being erected in Heavenly Russia – in order to receive Her, Whose birth in the four-dimensional worlds is the goal and purpose of the future marriage of the Russian demiurgeand Collective Soul. In historical terms, it is through the manifestation of the Great Feminine Spirit in the Rose of the World that the transformation of the governments of all peoples into a global community will begin. In all that, the Russian Synclite is being helped and will be helped by the Synclites of all the metacultures. In turn, the World Synclite will inherit and continue their work, so as to crown it with the appearance of a global theohumankind.
There is, however, another sakwala of zatomis in Shadanakar besides the nineteen great ones. These are the zatomis of metacultures whose development was tragically arrested in Enrof. If it becomes clear that the Providential forces of a given metaculture cannot withstand the onslaught of the demonic, its zatomis is transferred to a plane in that other sakwala. Its cultural and sometimes its state institutions in Enrof dissolve little by little into the cultures surrounding it, its Witzraors die, the underworld shrastrs hunger in miserable inactivity and eventually die off. But the zatomis continues to develop; its Synclite continues and intensifies its creative work. Souls that have not yet attained a level at which the zatomis of such a metaculture opens its doors to them may complete the necessary stages of growth outside of Enrof or undergo incarnations in other metacultures and countries. But in the end they always ascend to their own zatomis. There are also instances when the cultural-historical base in Enrof continues to exist while experiencing gradual decay, and the zatomis maintains an active link with it. In such cases, it is still possible, under favorable circumstances, for the zatomis to be restored to its former sakwala, and its suprapeople to historical life. Something like that is now taking place with Zhunfleya, as I have already mentioned.
It remains for me to list briefly the fifteen zatomis of that second sakwala.
Nanzbata is the zatomis of the Ancient Sudanese metaculture, which developed very slowly, barely smoldering under very unfavorable conditions in the Niger Valley, in the vicinity of Lake Chad, and in Cordophan between the ninth and fifth millennia B.C. It collapsed under the centrifugal forces that exhausted it during continuous internecine wars. That first attempt in the history of humanity to unite antagonistic and ethnographically diverse peoples through a common interethnic religion (polytheistic, of course) failed because of the intense demonic influence emanating from the religion's extremely ambivalent pantheon. Archaeological ruins of the culture may still be unearthed.
Its emblem is a circle of naked black dancers on an emeraldgreen background.
Tsen-Tin is the zatomis of the proto-Mongolian metaculture (proto-Mongolian in the geographical, not ethnographic, sense). Its people were Asiatic, but both anthropologically and spiritually they were more closely related to the peoples of Gondwana than to those of later Mongolia. Its people settled northern China and the Amur region in the fourth or third millennium B.C. and were in the process of converting from a nomadic to a settled way of life. Small cities had already begun to spring up. The culture had a remarkable beginning. It was not a demiurge of the suprapeople at the head of their hierarchy but a powerful demonic being that was to convert and had already begun to convert to Light. The being was thrown down by Gagrungr and the suprapeople were crushed by hordes sweeping over from Central Asia.
Its emblem is a winged dragon with its head thrown up to the sun, all awash with the sun's rays.
Pred is the zatomis of the Dravidian metaculture, which is a provisional designation, as it comprised peoples of various ethnic roots, including some closely related to the Sumerians. The cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa belong to the later stages of the metaculture. Its collapse (at the beginning of the second millennium B.C.) resulted from factors both internal (I have no idea of their nature) and external (the invasion of the Aryans).
I did not see clearly the emblem of Pred. But I did see a pink pagoda.
Asgard, which is sometimes incorrectly referred to by the more popular name Valhalla, is the zatomis of the ancient Germanic metaculture, which was crippled by the spread of historical Christianity. Disaster overtook it in the twelfth century A.D.
Its emblem is a golden hall in the clouds.
Tokka is the zatomis of the ancient Peruvian (pre-Inca) metaculture, which developed historically in the centuries immediately prior to and after the birth of Christ. There is, perhaps, no reason to bewail the collapse of the culture in Enrof, for the influence of the demonic was very strong in it (That culture was supposed to have greatly advanced the task of enlightening the animal world, but historically it came to deify it and degenerate into widespread cannibalism).
Its emblem depicts the stone statue of a seated puma.
Bon is the zatomis of the ancient Tibetan metaculture, which was destroyed by Buddhism, but elements of it were assimilated by the Mahayana culture.
The Bon emblem depicts red and blue bolts of lightning crisscrossing above the orange tent of a king. The blue lightning represents Buddhism and its spirituality; the red represents the pre-Buddhist Tibetan religion, which was tainted to a very great extent by demonism. The tent represents royalty, which fell as a result of the meeting of those two powers.
Gauripur is the zatomis of the small Himalayan metaculture, which separated from India too soon, yet had immense poten tial. It was there that the brightest centers of Buddhism were at one time kindled. There, in the context of the teaching, those metahistorical processes took place that fashioned it into a religion in the full sense of the word – that is, a teaching that was not only moral but transphysical and spiritual as well. The moral aspect of Buddhism was raised in the Himalayas to a height known only in the purest forms of Christianity.
The Himalayan metaculture collapsed under the two-pronged onslaught of state demons: the Turkic Witzraors from the north and west, and the Witzraors of the Great Mogul Empire from the south. At present the metaculture is dying out in Nepal.
Its emblem is a crowned mountain peak beneath the constellation Orion.
Yunkif is the zatomis of the Mongolian metaculture, which immediately fell prey to an unusually powerful Witzraor. Disaster overtook it in the thirteenth century.
Yunkif s emblem is a rolling line of hills, with two flocks, white and red, battling above them.
Yiru is the zatomis of the ancient Australian metaculture, which for two thousand years existed in central Australia in total isolation from the rest of humanity. Their society reached the level of a slave state. The metaculture collapsed as the result of the extremely active role played by demonic elementals – the spirits of deserts and impenetrable thickets. For many centuries two religions – "right hand" and "left hand," polytheistic and demonic – were locked in struggle within the culture. The latter offered human sacrifices to those same malevolent elementals that were engaged in destroying the metaculture. Toward the end, it was that religion that prevailed, and resistance to the encroachment of the desert and thickets was proclaimed taboo. The culture in Enrof died out from internal dessication. The most refined of their arts was painting. It was to a certain extent reminiscent of Cretan painting but was more distinctive and imaginative. The ruins to be unearthed will not be extensive enough to permit a picture of the civilization to be reconstructed.
Its emblem is a cloud above a volcano, representing the suprapeople and its Synclite.
Taltnom is the zatomis of the Tolteko-Aztec metaculture. Its emblem is the face of a hero crowned by the sun.
Kertu is the zatomis of the Yucatan (Mayan) metaculture. Its emblem depicts a blue serpent twined around a golden tree. Not every people has regarded the serpent as a dark symbol. The golden tree represents the spiritual (transphysical) world. The blue serpent symbolizes the suprapeople, who through spirallike growth rise into the spirit.
Intil is the zatomis of the Incan metaculture, whose collapse in Enrof, strange as it may seem, saved the world from great peril. (This will be discussed in another part of the book.) Its emblem is a red-clad figure, wearing a miter, with arms uplifted to the sun. Red here symbolizes majesty, and the miter, the high priesthood.
Daffam is the zatomis of the metaculture of the Great Lakes Indians. (That culture was specially charged with combating Voglea, the female lunar demon. That accounts for the suprapeople's exceptional chasteness and their rejection of urban-based civilization.)
Its emblem is a group of warriors pointing their spears at the crescent of a waning moon.
Lea is the zatomis of the Polynesian metaculture, which was doomed by its extreme geographical dispersion. Embers of that metaculture are still smouldering on Hawaii, Tahiti, and other archipelagoes. Its emblem is a golden mountain on an island in a blue sea.
Nikisaka is the zatomis of the Japanese metaculture, which was seriously wounded twice – by Buddhism and by Europeanism – and thus has not been able to realize its full potential. Shinto is in essence the veneration of Nikisaka as the Japanese Synclite. The goddess Amaterasu, properly understood, is none other than the Navna of Japan. The transfer of Nikisaka to the sakwala of developmentally arrested metacultures in Enrof is now taking place. The Rose of the World will be able to provide real assistance in revitalizing the zatomis: it is still entirely possible for the process to be reversed.
Its emblem is a blossoming cherry tree beside a pond.
3.3 The Middle Planes of Shadanakar
BEFORE ATTEMPTING TO DRAW a general picture of the demonic sakwalas, which play such a colossal role in the transphysics and metahistory of Shadanakar, as well as the sakwalas of elementals, some of which are closely bound with the demonic, I consider it advisable to give the reader some notion of certain sakwalas of ascent that succeed, as it were, the zatomis sakwalas. These sakwalas are extremely diverse, but together they comprise the middle planes of Shadanakar.
It is only natural that the higher the planes, the more difficult it becomes to apprehend them, and the fewer analogies with Enrof can be found in their landscapes, in the form and appearance of the beings abiding there, and in the manner of life they lead. Nine-tenths of what is seen or otherwise perceived remains beyond our comprehension. In the majority of cases, one has no choice but to confine oneself to a straightforward presentation of the essential facts, without attempting to reveal their consistency or deeper meaning. Therefore, this chapter promises to be virtually nothing more than the dry enumeration of the names of a few sakwalas and the planes they comprise.
I seem to recall, for example, that within mystics of Judaism can be found the concept of the egregor; however, it is difficult for me to judge how closely the term corresponds to the meaning given to it here, if only because of my less than superficial knowledge of Jewish theosophems. In any case, what is meant here by egregors are variomaterial formations that take shape over large collectives from certain emanations of the human psyche. Egregors do not have monads, but they possess a volitional charge of limited duration and the equivalent of consciousness. Every state, even
Luxembourg, has its own egregor. They are essentially static, passive beings. The majority of egregors do not take part in the struggle between the demonic and Providential forces in Shadanakar. There are some, however, that side with the demonic camp.
When egregors disintegrate, their equivalent of consciousness disappears as well, dispersing into space. They do not experience any pain at such times.
To the extent that it is possible to speak of the landscape of those planes, the sakwalas of egregors are characterized by yellowish swirls of space in which the egregors themselves stand out as somewhat denser than their surroundings.
The seven planes that compose that sakwala can be listed in the following order:
Zativ is the region of the egregors of primal tribes, which die out as the tribes are assimilated by larger nations or are destroyed physically. The egregors of humanity's oldest cultural-political formations used to abide there, egregors that have by now already dissolved into space.
Zhag is the region of state egregors. In addition, egregors of certain large contemporary social-political organizations, like the Indian National Congress Party, can also be found there.
Foraun is the plane of the egregors of churches. They form from the dark-ether radiations that issue from the mass of humans belonging to some church, radiations released by every person who has not reached the level of sanctity. The radiations arise when a soul's religious feelings become tainted with mundane preoccupations, material concerns, acquisitiveness, negative emotions – in general, with what the Fathers of the Church termed worldly cares. It often happens that egregors act as serious brakes or weights on the ascending path of churches. In time there will also be in Foraun an egregor of the Rose of the World. It is unavoidable, since the interreligious church of the future will be composed not only of saints but of hundreds of millions of people at different stages of their spiritual growth.
Udgrogr is the plane of egregors of the anti-churches and the power-hungry mass parties of modern times.
One plane, whose name I do not know, is inhabited by egregors generated by the psychic activity of the shrastrs' demonic
populace. I also do not know the name of the plane of egregors that form from the psychic activities of the world of daemons – that second, brighter humankind to be briefly discussed below.
The last of the egregor planes is called Tsebrumr. It is as yet empty. In time there wit; appear there the egregor of the future Anti-Church, the church in which will be carried out the quasireligious, demonic worship of Gagtungr. This will be, at the end of the first eon, the nucleus and foundation of the future satanohumankind.
A different, higher humankind of Shadanakar abides in a sakwala of three- and four-dimensional planes with an immense number of time streams. Unfortunately, my knowledge of them is meager to say the least. A host of unanswered questions that arise in connection with them has left a large gap in the picture I have been drawing of Shadanakar. These beings are called daemons. They are proceeding along a path of development similar to ours, but they began it much earlier and have achieved greater success in their spiritual growth. It appears that the key to this is the fact that Jesus Christ's mission, which in Enrof was curtailed almost at the start through the efforts of Gagtungr and which ended in only a partial victory, was brought to a successful conclusion in the daemon world. That occurred at a much earlier time than when Christ was incarnated in the person of Jesus. His victory in the daemon world removed the burdensome obstacles Gagtungr had placed on their path of ascent, and at present these beings have left us far behind. The length of time and number of trials necessary for them to reach spiritual maturity have been reduced many times over. There have been no signs of social disharmony among them for a long time, and their energy is channeled into spiritual and moral growth and into helping other planes, particularly the humanity of Enrof.
Daemons are winged people who, though they partly resemble angels in their external appearance, are different from them. In addition to many distinguishing characteristics, daemons are divided into two sexes. The chief plane of their existence, which corresponds to our Enrof, is called Zheram. Its natural environment, which is similar to ours, has been elevated to artistic and moral excellence, while their technology is spiritualized by an inner wisdom concerning the various energies and planes of Shadanakar and by the cultivation of higher abilities within their own being. The daemons are aware of everything essential about humanity in Enrof.
Ever since the completion of Christ's mission in Zheram, the daemons have been freed from the necessity of descent into the demonic worlds of retribution after death. The multiplaned sakwala of purgatories, which the majority of us know from experience but have forgotten, has been replaced for them by a single plane, called Urm, where some of them undergo expiatory cleansing after death. Kartiala, the world of enlightened daemons, their heavenly land, parallels the zatomis of our humanity. From there a staircase opens to the sakwala of Higher Purpose, and, lastly, to the World Synclite.
The daemons' active involvement in the struggle against Witzraors and antihumankind in the shrastrs constitutes one of the many tasks undertaken by the daemons of Kartiala in relation to other worlds in Shadanakar. Their inspirational and guiding influence upon the creators of our artistic culture constitutes another. The apostrophe some poets use to address their daemon, and others their Muse, is by no means a poetic device. It is testimony to genuine transphysical facts. I do not know if the nine sisters of Apollo ever existed in the Olympus zatomis – it is entirely possible that they did – but there can be no doubt that the female daemons (muses) or the male daemons (Socratic daemons in the narrow sense of the word) have aided our artists and thinkers in plumbing their inner creative depths. Only the blindness of materialism could cause us to pass over the countless testimonies to this fact given by our poets, writers, musicians, and philosophers, beginning even before Socrates and ending with Gogol and Alexander Blok.
Once they have completed their task, the majority of daemons-inspirers leave those they inspired. Sometimes a kind of union occurs, an extremely rare phenomenon very difficult to explain.
It is common for human shelts to weave an incarnation in the daemon world into their garlands. They are ordained such an incarnation so as to consolidate the gains their souls have made on their paths of Light.
But there is also another race that abides in the daemon sakwala, one that is less in number and has lagged behind in development. They are the wards, as it were, of the daemons. I do not have a clear notion of how they came to be in those worlds. It seems that they, too, are daemons, ones who at some time in the distant past went astray, lost their wings, and are now undoing the harm they caused themselves on a special road of atonement. These wingless beings barely differ in appearance from humans. Here I come to a fact that will inevitably evoke scoffs and even exasperation in most readers of this book. But if it is true that a song suffers from the loss of a single word, then this book will suffer from the loss of a single thought. Those beings whom I referred to as a lower race of daemons can in part be characterized as the metaprototypes of certain heroes and heroines of global literature and art in Enrof. It sometimes happens that the intuition of artists in Enrof – albeit, an intuition of geniuses alone – penetrates to Zheram, sees one of those beings, and records its image in human art. The image becomes a kind of magic crystal that acts as a locus for radiations people emit at times of active perception. These radiations rise up to Zheram and supply the metaprototype with energy to grow. If such an image is not created, the metaprototype's growth slows and in some cases it may even have to leave the daemon sakwala and embark on a lengthy journey through Enrof.
The majority of human representations in our painting and sculpture have no metaprototypes: they are portraits of people, no more. But works of art like the Mona Lisa, for example, are, in addition to their human prototype, connected with prototypes in Zheram that have been apprehended by the intuition of the genius. This is the origin of the extraordinary eloquence and power of these masterpieces. It is regrettable that the Mona Lisa was painted by Leonardo da Vinci in such a way that the prototype ended up debased, with the portrait absorbing certain elements from Duggur – one of the worlds of demonic elementals – as a result of which the prototype fell from Zheram to Urm, for that plane serves as a purgatory for metaprototypes as well as for daemons. The proto-Mona Lisa, raised back up to Zheram and higher through the afterlife efforts of Leonardo da Vinci, now abides in one of the planes of Higher Purpose. Venus de Milo is already in the World Synclite, since it was to the daemon Kartiala that the soul of the Greek woman who posed for the sculptor in Enrof rose up through Olympus after the historical
demise of Greco-Roman culture. Merging in Kartiala with her metaprototype, she began to climb the staircase of ascent through the upper planes. In time, the same will happen with all the souls of such metaportraits.
The situation is even more complex and various with paintings of the mythological, psychological, historical, and folk genres. Morozova, the noblewoman in Surikov's painting, had a metaprototype in Zheram, as did some of the secondary figures on the canvas, and the metaprototype has been raised up to Kartiala thanks to the artist's work. In addition, Surikov is at present working in the Heavenly Kremlin on a dazzling variation on the picture.
Repin's depiction of Ivan the Terrible's murder of his son tied a knot that Repin has been unable to unravel to the present day. This he must do in Drokkarg – the shrastr of Russian antihumankind counterposed to the Heavenly Kremlin, where Ivan the Terrible now abides as captive and slave.
The situation is worse still for the Fallen Demon of Vrubel – a stunning, unprecedented case of a demonic infraportrait. To unravel the knot, Vrubel was forced to descend to Gashsharva, to the angels of darkness. It is a terrible thing to have to say, but it might be better, despite the brilliance of the work, if it were destroyed in Enrof.
Landscape painting, in spite of its immense cultural and psychological importance, very rarely possesses any transphysical meaning. Such meaning is present either in those cases when the artist is able to communicate to the viewer his or her feeling for the worlds of elementals visible in Enrof through nature, or to hint at the landscapes of some other plane through the use of unique combinations of lines and colors. In my personal opinion, the Russian artist who succeeded best in that was Roerich, and at times the dubious, scorned, even untalented artist Churlonis.
As for literature, in the overwhelming majority of works, there are no metaprototypes behind the characters. For example, almost all Soviet literature, with a few exceptions, has none. As well, characters of a historical nature – for example, Pushkin's Boris Godunov or Shakespeare's Julius Caesar – cannot have a metaprototype. But Macbeth has one, because the work is not historical. Generally speaking, the presence of a metaprototype in a work entails a sharp departure from historical accuracy in attributing particular depth to the personage and a greatness of character that does not have any basis in the historical prototype. That is not to be found either in Pushkin's play orJulius Caesar, which is proof of the lack of metahistorical depth in those works.
After the death of artistic geniuses in Enrof, the metaprototypes of their works in Zheram meet and spend time with them, as the karma of artistic creation draws them together. Many great artistic geniuses have in their afterlife had to assist the prototypes of their heroes or heroines in their ascent. Dostoyevsky spent an enormous amount of time and energy to raise up his metaprototypes, for the suicides of Stavrogin and Svidrigailov, dictated by creative and mystical logic, threw proto-Stravogin and proto-Svidrigailov down into Urm. At present, all Dostoyevsky's heroes have been raised up by him: for example, Svidrigailov has been raised to Kartiala, and Ivan Karamazov and Smerdyakov to Magirna, one of the worlds of Higher Purpose. Also there are Sobakevich, Chichikov, and other heroes of Gogol, and Tolstoy's Pierre Bezukhov, Andrei Bolkonsky, Princess Maria, and Natasha Rostova, whom Tolstoy raised from Urm at the cost of tremendous exertions. Goethe's Margaret already abides on one of the upper planes of Shadanakar, while Don Quixote long ago joined the World Synclite, which Faust, too, will soon enter.
I would like to take this opportunity to say a few words about the transphysical meaning of the dramatic arts. Christianity's traditionally negative attitude toward such forms (regardless of how it has been explained by cultural historians and even religious teachers) arose because the early and medieval Christians, in a manner of speaking, sensed unconsciously with their religious intuition the close relationship between the dramatic arts and the ancient organism that is partly linked with Lilith, and partly with an even darker demonic world, called Duggur. (In a later chapter I will describe that world in more detail.) Duggur is bound up with human sexuality, and although it was not discerned clearly in the Middle Ages, its diabolical radiations evoked fear, disgust, and shame in the people of that time. Properly speaking, theater can possess, on a transphysical level, widely varying, even contradictory, meanings. Shaliapin was fully justified in fasting and praying after performing the role of Mephistopheles. The play The Life of a Man was harmful for the playwright, the cast, and the audience because it lacked what the ancients called catharsis. All drama that takes actors and the audience through catharsis – that is, spiritual elevation and enlightenment, however brief is deeply vindicated. As for metaprototypes, the effect of performances in Enrof are like that experienced by Dostoyevsky's Smerdyakov. While he was in Urm, thrown down there by the mystical-creative impulses of Dostoyevsky, the performance of his role on stage pained, burdened, and slowed him. Now it is of no consequence. The performance of morally uplifting roles or roles leading to catharsis are good for everyone, including metaprototypes.
With the daemon sakwala, my account will for a time leave the four-dimensional worlds. Fongaranda, a lone five-dimensional plane that is not a part of any sakwala, is now before us.
A warning is in order here: we are about to deal with concepts that are far from customary. For Fongaranda is the abode of shells of masterpieces of architecture. There they possess the ability to move and grow; they evolve in the sense of spiritual maturation. Their external appearance closely resembles that of enlightened elementals, but they are not fluid in form as those spirits are, nor are their bodies interpenetrable. The reader should bear in mind that the construction of their images in Enrof by architects of genius, whose intuition caught their gleam in Fongaranda, gives them an ether body, which forms inside the physical body of the buildings after many years of receiving radiations from thousands and millions of people. If enough time has passed for such an ether body to form, the destruction of the physical body in Enrof is no longer of any transphysical consequence. The shelf in Fongaranda dons the ether body and moves to one of the zatomis. After the turn of the eon (the global period when the zatomis will cease to exist as such) the shells of those monads, together with their coatings, which by then will have been completely transformed, will merge with their monads on one of the planes of Higher Purpose and subsequently enter the Elite of Shadanakar.
It is primarily the shelts of churches and palaces that abide in Fongaranda. There are, for example, spectacular prototypes of an Orthodox monastery, an Egyptian pyramid, a ziggurat, a gopuram of South India, a Catholic abbey, and a Rhenish castle. But there are also shelts of some individual buildings, for instance, St. Peter's Cathedral, the Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed, the Temple of Heaven in China, even the palaces at Versailles and Pushkin. There are also shelts such as those of the Parliament buildings in London and the Admiralty in St. Petersburg.
After a strange world like Fongaranda, the concept of a sakwala of angels will probably seem familiar and like nothing out of the ordinary. There are two such sakwalas. The first and lower of the two comprises three planes. It is called Angels of the Lower Circle. In essence they are, chronologically speaking, the first humankind of Shadanakar, who at one time lived on planes of denser materiality, though not in Enrof. Their era preceded the era of the Titans. It is beyond our capacity to fully comprehend the manner of their lives now, in their enlightened worlds. We can only apprehend that aspect of their work that has a direct bearing on us. The first of these planes is inhabited by cherubim, the guardians of people performing missions of Light. They are just that – guardians; it is the daemons who are the inspirers! We have heard of guardian angels since childhood, and it is not our fault if we thought that such an angel hovered over the right shoulder of every one of us. They have the same external appearance described in tradition, and their world is a landscape of gorgeous colors that we cannot perceive but that are vaguely reminiscent of pink and violet.
Another plane – a land of white-gold pierced everywhere by beams of light – belongs to seraphim, the guardians of certain human communities: churches, religious groups, some charitable organizations, and those very few cities whose spiritual integrity and moral purity are of particular importance in the eyes of the Providential powers. There are times when a guard of seraphim encircles a city because taking place within it is one or another metahistorical event or transphysical process that requires special assistance or protection. When the process or event is completed, and a new era begins, the guard of seraphim is withdrawn. There were guards over Kiev during the reign of St. Vladimir, over Moscow during the reigns of Prince Daniil and Ivan Kalita, and several times over Jerusalem, Rome, and many other cities. Benares,a city of tremendous metahistorical significance, is one of those rare instances when the guard of seraphim does not leave a city for several centuries. Of course, from a narrowly Christian point of view, statements like the preceding can only give rise to perplexity. In appearance seraphim resemble six-winged angels.
The sakwala concludes with the world of the so-called Thrones, whose appearance nearly matches our image of archangels, and whose abode is greenish blue, pierced by playful beams of light. The Thrones are the guardians of nations. There are many of them – the spiritual maturation of every nation is overseen by a host of those resplendent beings.
Moving on to the second sakwala – the Angels of the Upper Circle – I find I cannot even resort to such meager visual images as I used for the first sakwala to help the reader form an idea of this one. All I can say is that they are the abodes of hierarchies of Light of tremendous power, those same ones who create the materiality of the three-, four-, and five-dimensional planes in Shadanakar.
First come the Astrals, known in Christian mysticism as the Principalities. They are the creators of materiality for Enrof. Next come the Powers, creators of materiality for the daemon sakwalas, and the Dominions, creators of materiality for the worlds of Enlightenment (except Olirna). The sakwala of Angels of the Upper Circle concludes with the world of the Virtues, who create materiality for the zatomis, and the Archangels, those same beings who were Sirins, Alkonosts, and Gamayuns before their transformation in Paradise, Eden, Monsalvat, Zhunfleya, and Holy Russia – all the zatomis of Christian metacultures. They create materiality for the worlds of Higher Purpose. The materiality of the angelic worlds themselves, as well as that of the upper planes of Shadanakar, is created by the hierarchies of the metabramfatura.
I realize that, despite the similarity in nomenclature, the above is not concordant with traditional Christian angelology. I am sorry that it is so. But I am not writing on the basis of my own knowledge and cannot make any alterations until that single Voice I trust with all my heart tells me otherwise.
Our survey has arrived at the sakwala of Higher Purpose. These worlds are common to people, angels, daemons, elementals, and even to enlightened animals. They soar far above those distinct segments of Shadanakar called metacultures. Naturally, my knowledge of them is scant, if not to say beggarly.
I am not even sure of the name of the first of these worlds. It sounds something like Usnorm, but I can't make it out more clearly. The spinning of the planet on its axis is evident there as it is here. It must have been nightfall at the time I was there, because I vaguely remember seeing a glowing mist of stunning majesty, as though the creative heart of our Universe had revealed itself to me in visible form for the first time. It was Astrafire, the great center of our Galaxy, which is hidden from our sight in Enrof by dark clouds of cosmic matter.
I also saw a scattering of countless stars, but not as we see them here. Indeed, they were not stars, but bramfaturas. They were not bright pinpricks in the sky but systems of concentric spheres visible through each other. When my gaze rested on one of them, it grew huge and distinct, just like a cinematic close-up. It seems to me now that they were all spinning slowly, harmoniously sounding and calling to each other with multi-toned voices. But that may only seem so now, and may be the result of preconceptions about the harmony of the celestial spheres, an idea that came to me not from experience but from human legends. In any case, those harmonies could barely be heard above the surges of an incredible choir that was sounding right there around me, rising from depths to heights that I could neither comprehend nor measure with my eyes. All this is my recollection of the plane-temple reserved for the eternal liturgy of humankind.
Oh, not only humankind! There were, I guess, millions of beings there, and – I don't know how many exactly – probably more than half of them had never been nor were destined to be human. There were enlightened souls of elementals and animals, wondrous daemons,and angels of various circles. When we read the prophecy in the Apocalypse about animals gifted with intelligence performing the liturgy around the altar in another world, it may be a symbol, but it is also a hint at reality, a reality that did not yet exist at the time the author of the Apocalypse was living. For Usnorm, the temple common to all, is the brainchild of that same great human spirit who was John the Evangelist in his last incarnation on Earth.
While there were millions worshipping, those performing the service at the church altar numbered in the thousands. Everyone who reaches the sakwala of Higher Purpose eventually performs the liturgy in Usnorm, and is then followed by the next in order.
The most uplifting and joyous services in the churches and temples of the higher religions are but dim reflections and echoes of the eternal liturgy of Usnorm. There is indeed an oral element in the liturgy, but the words are in the language of the World Synclite, which we cannot reproduce, and in which words are not simply individual sounds but chords of meaning, as it were, and some appear at the same time as flashes and waves of light. There is an element of movement in the liturgy, the heavenly prototype of sacred dance. But as Usnorm is five-dimensional, movement occurs not along a horizontal surface, as it does here, but in all five dimensions. There are elements of light and color in the liturgy, but it is impossible to convey a description of these colors outside the seven visible to us. What can I say that would do justice to the symphonies of light, beside which even the fireworks of Faer seem monotone and feeble? What can I say about the spiritual fragrances? About the incense of Usnorm, which rises from gigantic floating and swinging thuribles up to Astrafire itself
Usnorm is the first world where those who are ascending no longer absorb material radiations but rather purely spiritual ones. These issue from the very highest transcosmic spheres, which one could call the Empyrean, if that ancient word is not taken to mean a fantastic "world of motionless stars" but rather the all-embracing abode of pure Spirit – that is, the Holy Trinity.
The worlds of Higher Purpose are way stations between the zatomis, Kartiala of the daemons, and Hangvilla of enlightened animals on the one hand, and the worlds of the Higher Transmyths of the Global Religions on the other. Above Usnorm is Gridruttva, the white chamber where the great creative plan for humanity is devised. After it comes Alikanda, which resembles the heart of a flower; Tovia, which resembles foam, hoarfrost, a white garden, or falling snow; and Ro, which resembles huge singing crystals. The most beautiful works of music in Enrof, in Olirna, among the daemons, even in the zatomis are but echoes of these crystals. These three planes are the abode of human monads that have merged with their mature souls.
Magirn, a plane that resembles illumined ocean depths, is the abode of monads and metaprototypes that have merged with their shells and transfigured astral bodies. The monads of animals merge with their mature souls in Kaermis, which could be described as a land of living sphinxes. The same happens in Deitrast to the monads of daemons and in Sibran to the monads of angels, about which I can only say that it is an unbelievable choir of rejoicing. The monads of elementals abide in Flauros, of which the words "solar flares" can give an intimation. The sakwala of the world of Higher Purpose also includes Niatos: violet heights where the monads of our former enemies – demons who have converted to Light – merge with their shells. I have already mentioned the powerful demonic spirit, the great "dragon" of the proto-Mongolian culture. Cast down by Gagtungr into a plane of torment known as the Rain of Endless Misery, it was long ago rescued from there by the Providential powers and now shines in the world of violet heights as one of its most beautiful lights.
As far as I can recall, Iroln, splendid and immense, is also a part of the sakwala. It is the abode of human monads before they merge with their mature souls. Iroln is the initial destination of the individual spirit of each person when it leaves the heart of the Creator and enters Shadanakar. It resembles a multitude of suns gliding and spinning. And now I am not sure: it seems to me that Iroln is not five but six-dimensional, and my inclusion of it into the sakwala of Higher Purpose is a mistake, an aberration on my part.
Higher on the staircase of hierarchies in Shadanakar are situated, one after another, the sakwalas of cosmic emanations. What are they? Other bramfaturas have been acting on Shadanakar in a tangible manner throughout its multimillion-year history. These bramfaturas are either more powerful than ours, or more advanced, or commensurate with us in size and level of ascent, but because they are located not too far from us in space they therefore interact with our bramfatura. The materiality of the worlds of emanations is created by the forces of Light of other bramfaturas. The bramfaturas are inhabited by higher beings who can travel great cosmic distances without difficulty. These visitors from other bramfaturas are the great allies and friends of the forces of Light of Shadanakar.
Other than to list a few names, I have literally nothing to say about some sakwalas of emanations. For example, there is a sakwala of emanations from Orion. Orion is a system of bramfaturas of immense power that has freed itself completely from the demonic, and it plays a prominent role in the life of the Galaxy. Of course, listing the names of the ten planes that make up the sakwala cannot evoke in the reader anything but disappointment in its meagerness. But how do I know? Perhaps even these names will be of some use in the future: Yumaroya, Odgiana, Ramn, Vualra, Ligeya, Fianna, Eramo, Veatnor, Zaolita, and Natolis.
Despite the huge disparity between our conditions and those that reign on the physical plane of Jupiter or Neptune, we must accustom ourselves to the idea that many of the planets and their moons possess bramfaturas. Jupiter is even inhabited on our plane, in Enrof, by intelligent life forms, but they are so different from us and live under conditions so unthinkable that no contact will ever occur between us and them in Enrof. But contact does take place on the five-dimensional planes of both bramfaturas. The Elite of Jupiter and its moons have created two planes of emanations within Shadanakar, one plane has been created by Saturn and its moons, and one each by Uranus and Neptune. All of them together make up the sakwala of planetary emanations.
A special place is occupied by the three planes of Iora, Achnos, and Gebn. They form the sakwala of emanations from the transfigured planet Daiya, which no longer exists in Enrof: The planet used to be situated between Mars and Jupiter. Long ago, the efforts of its demiurgesled to the expulsion of the demonic powers to а
The sakwala of solar emanations numbers nine planes. Again, I can give only names: Raos, Flermos, Tramnos, Gimnos, Areya, Nigveya, Trimoya, Derayn, and Iordis.
I can also list the names of the four planes of emanations from Astrafire, the center of the Galaxy: Grezoar, Malein, Viruana, and Luvarn.
One particular system is in part connected with the sakwalas of emanations. It would be more correct to call this system a bramfatura, though at present it is part of Shadanakar, being encompassed within its five- and six-dimensional planes. It is the Lunar Bramfatura.
I do not know when exactly the development of lunar humankind – Selenites – came to an end in Enrof. In any case, it was in the very distant past, almost a million years ago. But evolution there proceeded at a much slower pace, though the time required between the appearance of organic life on the surface of the Moon and the emergence of intelligent life forms was far less than for the corresponding process on Earth. Generally speaking, the idea that physically smaller worlds should in every case evolve more quickly is not always true of individual periods of development of organic life, let alone of the tempo of the evolution of intelligent life. But H.G. Wells's intuition of the external appearance of these beings, which he describes in his fascinating book, is amazing, especially if one considers the rationalist complexion and scientific-like superficiality of his thinking. He correctly envisioned their overall insect-like appearance: the soft, elastic consistency of their physical tissue, their bodies' ability to metamorphose in accordance with the task at hand, the advanced state of their technology, and even the fact that toward the end of their civilization they had begun partly to exploit the interior of the Moon.
The Selenites' tragic end resulted from the victory of Voglea, the female lunar demon. One might well wonder how it was that the activities of a female demon found an outlet in their rationalistic society. But there exists a particular variety of rationality, one that can be denoted as female, and not everywhere is its expression so weak as among our humanity. It took root among the Selenites with special resiliency, and its effects could particularly be seen in the fact that their technology was based far more than ours on the principles of magic.
The stages of the Selenites' spiritual and cultural decline went from satanohumankind to degeneration to death under the weight of their technology. Their deepening spiritual bankruptcy caused the Selenite society to descend into anarchy, lose the ability to run their own machines, and finally die of cold and hunger. But to this day, the world of Voglea remains a part of the Lunar Bramfatura. For an extremely long time it maintained a singular kind of neutrality, at times warring with both the powers of Light and Gagtungr. But in the last while the planetary demons of Shadanakar and Voglea have been moving toward a truce and, in fact, an alliance to join forces and drive the powers of Light out of Shadanakar. One demonic plane in Shadanakar, Duggur, is closely linked with the emanations of Voglea. At present, the bewitching, vampire-like, bluegray female demon is rebuilding a special plane – the lunar hell. There, with Gagtungr's consent, the victims of Duggur will descend. Until now, some of those victims have met with an even worse fate: ejection from Shadanakar into the emptiness of the Galaxy.
The three other planes of the Lunar sakwala counterpose Voglea's world. Soldbis can be seen on the surface of the Moon from the zatomis; it is the abode of a great many of those enlightened ones whose spiritual growth was too slow and who therefore met with tragedy. Their last incarnation in Enrof occurred during the period of the lunar satanahumankind and degeneration, and since then they have spent a vast length of time on rehabilitation and gradual enlightenment in Soldbis. Another world, Laal, is for the Lunar Elite. A great many Selenites have already risen even higher, to the Elite of Shadanakar. Finally, there is Tanit, the abode of the lunar goddess and the third and brightest of the lunar worlds.
If through careful observation we unravel into separate strands what we feel at nights when the moon is full, we will awaken to certain threads of feeling. First is a sense of harmony, which is the effect Soldbis and Laal have on us. Second is a subtle nostalgia for the heavens, which is Tanit calling to us. Third is the lure of sexual transgression, which is Voglea haunting and tempting us. She fears the Sun, always retreating from its light to the dark side of the Moon. During a full moon, only diminished emanations from Voglea – those that pass through the Moon's crust – reach us. But when the Moon is waning, Voglea moves together with the darkness to the side facing the Earth. That is why the waning of the Moon and a new moon have for many such a sickening, sinister, and depressing effect on the subconscious.
Our survey of the structure of Shadanakar has at last arrived at the grandiose sakwala that I am forced to refer to by the painfully cumbersome title of the Worlds of the Highest Aspects of the Global Religions. It is the world of their purest transmyths.
Many years ago, long before the Great Patriotic War, when I was still quite young, a mysterious, beautiful, and persistent vision began appearing to me. Seen from an endless distance away, it looked like a bluish crystal pyramid with the sun shining through it. I sensed the magnitude of its significance, the waves of grace, power, and beauty pouring forth from that shining center, but I had no idea what the vision could mean. Later I even thought that it was a glimmer of the World Salvaterra refracted by my limited human mind. How naive! Those whose souls are illumined by a glimmer of the World Salvaterra become saints and prophets. And, of course, its glimmer can in no way be likened to anything earthly.
It was only many years later, quite recently in fact, that I learned that the pyramid is not alone, that there are others in tandem, as it were, with it, five in all, and there will never be a sixth in Shadanakar. But there is only one blue pyramid. The rest are other colors, and it is impossible to say which is the most beautiful. Of course, for us, transmyths are in themselves transcendental. It may very well be that "in themselves" they bear no resemblance to any geometric forms. But it was in the form of those gigantic crystal pyramids that they imprinted themselves on my mind, and the adoption of just those images must contain some deeper meaning.
Later I was struck by something else. One of the pyramids, smaller in size but of a wondrous, unearthly white, is the higher transmyth of a religion that I personally would never have thought to include among the global or higher religions: the transmyth of Zoroastrianism. My puzzlement has yet to be dispelled. To this day I have been unable to learn how that local religion, which left the historical scene a long time ago and, it seems to me, is not, mythologically speaking, all that rich, could prove to be a reflection of an immense reality professed by it alone. My puzzlement notwithstanding, its world is called Azur.
Another pyramid, which I better understand, is also comparatively small in size, but it is gold in color. It is the highest aspect of Judaism, the aspect that has left far below the anti-Christian intransigence of its lackluster and turbid earthly twin. It is the golden world of heavenly glory, whose light penetrated into the visions of the great mystics of the Kabbala and the prophets, and for which the winding thread of the Talmud is as the dust of valleys is for a lord of mountain heights. The name of the golden pyramid is Ae.
The highest aspect of the Hindu transmyth is a huge pyramid whose color is reminiscent of our violet. That complex world is layered, the outermost of its layers being the ultimate goals of Vedanta and yoga, and the highest layer being the ultimate goal of the Synclite of India, an intimation of which we might find in Indian philosophy under the name of Nirukta. Concerning another layer, Eroya, and yet another, whose name I do not have the right to pronounce, I can only say that, though they who were once humans also abide in those worlds, they are more like guests there. Shatrittva, the last layer of the violet pyramid, is the abode of many hierarchies of the Hindu pantheon. But one can speak of the exact correspondence of the pantheon images to the hierarchies of the transmyth only in part, in certain individual cases. For example, hierarchies of entirely different heights, powers, and cosmic levels – from "the National Aphrodite" of India to the Virgin Mother of the Universe – are worshiped in Enrof under one and the same name, Kali-Durga.
No less huge is the green pyramid, the world of the higher aspect of Buddhism, which comprises two layers. There is a popular misconception that Buddhism, or at least its southern variety, is atheistic. In reality, there is of course no atheism to be found at the highest levels of Hinayana or Jainism. But beginning with Gautama and Mahavira, thinkers and disseminators have judged that it is in the best interests of the masses to emphasize the immateriality of the question of God in one's spiritual salvation, so that the efforts people themselves have to make are not shunted onto God. And how could they not believe in God, they whose Nirvana is the first of the two layers of the great green pyramid? The second layer belongs to the Dhyani Bodhisattvas, the hierarchies that guide the peoples of Buddhist metacultures. We should treat with caution the claim made by the spiritual shepherds of Tibet that the majority of Dalai Lamas are reincarnations of the Dhyani Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara. To take that claim literally would show that the clarity of our thinking has not yet risen above the clarity that is attainable within definite religious limits. But we will not be far from the truth if we regard the proposition that Avalokitesvara is reincarnated in a successive series of Dalai Lamas as a sort of intimation that most Dalai Lamas are inspired by that great hierarchy, an intimation designed to accord with the level of mass understanding. The second to last of the Tibetan spiritual leaders was not wholly inspired, while the one ruling at present (1957) is nothing other than an impostor, which accounts for his behavior.
As for the blue pyramid that has been beckoning to me for the last twenty years – it is Heavenly Jerusalem, the higher transmyth of Christianity. It is what lies behind the Christian creeds shared by Catholics, Orthodox believers, Lutherans, Ethiopians, and the future followers of the Rose of the World. I said "creeds," but that is not precise, because it is almost impossible to express that single, common truth in words. Heavenly Jerusalem is the highest plane of the Synclites of Christian metacultures, and yet it is still not the Church. The Church is the highest plane of Shadanakar. And before undertaking to describe it, we must do an about-face and go down, far down into fire and darkness. For without a notion of the frightful and dread demonic sakwalas, we will also be unable to gain a proper notion of the higher planes of Shadanakar.
4. The Structure of Shadanakar: The Infraphysical Planes
4.1 The Demonic Base
ONE FACT that our religious consciousness has failed to take into account to this day is that the Trinity intrinsic to God recurs or is duplicated in some of the monads He creates. The crude saying, "The Devil is the ape of God" has a profound and multifaceted meaning. The warped, inverted imitation of the Trinity, the inner mystery of the Divine Spirit, by the great demonic monads constitutes one of its most important senses. I cannot, of course, shed any light on the triune of Lucifer. It is on a level so infinitely beyond all the powers of our comprehension that it is scarcely possible to apprehend anything about it other than the very fact of its existence, the fact of its fall in times immemorial, and its continuous struggle against God.
Despite the tremendous gap between the dimensions of his being and ours, the nature of Gagtungr, the great demon of Shadanakar, may, under favorable circumstances, be apprehended to a somewhat greater extent. Most important, his triunity becomes evident, though the cause, origin, and purpose of that triunity (if it does indeed have a purpose) remain a mystery.
What comes to light first of all is that we are dealing with a kind of blasphemous parody of the hypostases of the Holy Trinity. But the nature of the Divine Triune – arguably the most complex issue in theology – will be discussed, if only briefly, in another section of the book. Thus, for now it is impossible to shed light on the nature of the parody I have just mentioned. I will only say that Gagtungr endeavors to counterpose his first person, the Great Torturer, to the First Hypostasis of the Divine Trinity; his second person, who could best be described by the name the Great Harlot, to the Second Hypostasis; and the antipode called Urparp to the Third Hypostasis of the Trinity. Urparp is the implementer of the demonic plan and in a certain sense might be called the principle of form. It is that aspect of the great demonic being that manifests itself in the life of various planes in Shadanakar as a power that actively works toward transforming their nature in accordance with the designs and purposes of the Torturer. It is the formative power. Fokerma, the Great Harlot, is that aspect of the demonic being that pulls and draws souls and fates within Gagtungr's compass. The first aspect, Gisturg, the Great Torturer, is the ultimate depth of the demonic self, the repository of its higher will, power, and desire.
His external appearance, as seen by the spiritual vision of those few humans who have gained entry to the dark heights of Digm, his abode, is dreadful beyond all description. Reclining, as it were, over a raging purple ocean, with black wings stretched from horizon to horizon, he raises his dark grey face up to where a blaze of infrapurple light pulses and flares, while above it all blazes a luminary of an inconceivable color vaguely reminiscent of violet. Woe to those whom Gagtungr fixes with his gaze and who return that gaze with open eyes. If I remember correctly, of all the human agents of dark missions later brought to Digm, only one, Torquemada, found the strength at that moment to call to mind the name of God. All the other monads became slaves to the devil for untold centuries to come.
Besides Gagtungr, the elect of evil also abide in Digm. They are the monads of a very few humans that have merged with their demonized shells and the few souls of certain beings of a demonic nature, including the grand igvas, the dark leaders of antihumankind who have already completed their journey on various denser material planes. There they together devise the plan for the struggle against God; there they prostrate themselves before Gisturg, are intimate with the Great Harlot, and are initiated into depths of knowledge in contemplating the face of Urparp.
There is yet an even higher demonic plane in Shadanakar: multidimensional Shog, whose materiality was created by the great demons of the macrobramfatura. Powerful currents of dark energy flow out of the depths of the Universe into the plane, and no one other than Gagtungr can enter it. All others are only able to see it from the outside, and even then only at rare moments. At those moments, they no longer perceive as spherical that same luminary of indescribable color that blazes over Digm. Rather, they perceive it as a pulsating arc stretching from one end of the plane to the other, with its light still akin to violet. It is the galactic anticosmos, the seat of power within the Galaxy of Lucifer himself. At times, the arc sags inward, as it were, and Lucifer's energy pours into Shog. Thereupon Gagtungr, imbibing it, raises his wings up to the black sky. That, at least, is how those who see Shog from the outside perceive it. The manifestations and forms of that world themselves are in actuality transcendental for us.
There are, however, other planes in Shadanakar from where the galactic anticosmos is visible, though in a different aspect. The anticosmos of all bramfaturas, Shadanakar included, are twodimensional: they are endless geometrical planes, as it were. They all intersect along the same line, which could be called the demonic axis of the Galaxy. To help the reader visualize it, I will employ a kind of structural model. Take a book, stand it up vertically on its spine, open it and spread its pages out, and in your mind imagine the two dimensional plane of each of its pages extending on to infinity. All the planes will intersect at different angles, but all along the same vertical line somewhere on the spine. The demonic axis of the Galaxy, its anticosmos, is the cosmic prototype for the line of intersection of all these planes. Naturally, it will be visible to any being abiding on any of these twodimensional worlds, including the corresponding plane in Shadanakar.
The two-dimensional plane in Shadanakar is sometimes called hell, but the term is not entirely appropriate. The plane is not where human souls suffer in the afterlife; rather, it is the abode of most of the demonic beings of our planet. It could be called the anticosmos of Shadanakar, but that is not quite correct either, because the anticosmos is not that one plane alone but all the demonic worlds that counterpose the Divine Cosmos. It is only, so to speak, the chief demonic stronghold. Its real name is Gashsharva.
One could, if one likes, consider the beings there to be incarnated. On the other hand, the concept of incarnation is extremely relative. Their monads always remain high up in Digm and Shog, while their shells, for the most part, languish between incarnations in the Pit of Shadanakar, a horrible onedimensional world.
Gashsharva is the nucleus of the system of worlds created by the demonic powers of Shadanakar to counter the Divine Cosmos and eventually subvert it. No human being could help viewing that dismal yet awesome world as anything but horrific. The combination of a large number of time streams with only two dimensions produces a peculiar spiritually stifling atmosphere. Every monad experiences great pain when its shelf enters that world, a pain reminiscent of the sensation that would arise if a body were forced into a tight iron corset. The fewer the dimensions, the denser the materiality of the world. The atmosphere of that world, however, still resembles air, while the completely flat and uniform ground is harder than any matter in Enrof. There is no equivalent of our vegetation. The radiation of the beings themselves and certain mechanical devices serve as light sources. Blue and green are not visible here, though two kinds of infrared are. I will give one of them the provisional name of infrapurple, stressing as I do so that it has no relation to infraviolet. The impression it produces is like that of a very thick, dark, and intense purple.
The galactic anticosmos, which is visible from Digm as a luminary of an absolutely inconceivable and indescribable color, and from Shog in the form of a titanic blazing and pulsating infrapurple arc stretching across the sky, appears to Gashsharva as a section of the horizon that emits infrapurple light of uniform strength from infinitely distant regions.
All the inhabitants of Gashsharva are bound together by the tyranny of Gagtungr and, at the same time, by a kind of union of shared interests. They hate Gagtungr, yet not as much, of course, as they hate God. The keepers of the lower purgatories, magma, and core – the three sakwalas of Retribution – abide there.
Vrubel's The Fallen Demon has a twofold meaning. It is both a memory of Digm, of Gagtungr with wings stretched to the horizons, and a metaportrait, or rather, an infraportrait, of a lesser demon: a keeper of one of the purgatories. They are called angels of darkness, and the name captures their appearance perfectly. There is something human-like about them, they have large wings of astonishing beauty, and one senses something regal in the purplish and reddish color of their wings. But in Vrubel's picture these extraordinary wings are broken. The artist's brilliant intuition conveyed through this detail the chief disability crippling Gashsharva's inhabitants. Their wings are in actuality undamaged, but the possibility of using them is painfully limited, for they can only struggle laboriously, but not fly, through the plane's dense yet transparent atmosphere. The ashen pallor of their faces is loathsome and terrible; their predatory and merciless nature is wholly revealed in their facial features. These keepers of the lower purgatories replenish their energy by imbibing the gavvakh of humans drawn down to the purgatories by their karma. In passing from Gashsharva to those purgatories, they enter a less dense atmosphere in which crooked, uneven flight, all zigzags and jerks, is nevertheless possible.
Other inhabitants of Gashsharva, ryphras, the keepers of the magma, bear absolutely no resemblance to humans. Each of them individually resembles most closely a moving ridge of hills. They have something like a face, but the features are very indistinct.
The reader might criticize me next for my lack of imagination or for faithfulness to Christian tradition just where it is the most suspect. But it is that very same free play of the imagination that I am trying to banish from these pages, and the fewer the fancies they contain the better. As for Christian tradition, what is retained here does not depend on my personal preferences but on corroboration by my spiritual experience. Unfortunately, the existence of certain beings popularized in Christian demonology has also received such corroboration. Strange as it may seem, beings resembling the chorts do in fact exist, complete with, believe it or not, horns and tail. They abide in Gashsharva,
where they have the dubious pleasure of being the keepers of the Core – the sakwala comprising the most horrific planes of torment in Shadanakar. Generally speaking, many of the legends we are accustomed to treating with a smile or, at best, regarding as symbolic should be taken quite literally. Now there is a challenge that is beyond the powers of the modern rational mind!
Gashsharva is inhabited by a wide range of fantastic beings. Among them I also know of powerful female demons, to whom I am accustomed to giving the provisional name of velgas. They are giants. They sometimes manifest themselves in human history as fomentors of violence and anarchy. In no way do they resemble humans or even the monsters of our world here. They are more like huge, coiling, blanketing cloaks of black and purple. Every people, as I recall, has only one velga. In any case, in Russia, there is only one, a very ancient one. Their incarnations in Gashsharva – if we can consider them incarnations – last for centuries.
At one time all those beings lived on the Earth's surface – not in Enrof, but on a plane of approximately the same density and even remotely resembling it. Created by Gagtungr at the very beginning of Shadanakar's history, that plane has long ceased to exist. The demonic beings were smaller in size in that world and were, on the whole, somewhat different in appearance. But they were unable to feel at ease there. They were pressed and cowed by the light. Their essence would have been transformed under its influence and would eventually have ceased to conform to their demonic natures. They do not have an easy life now in Gashsharva, but there they nevertheless remain who they are.
Still other beings make that plane their home, but I know nothing about them, though I do know that some of those who were humans in Enrof abide there. They are the agents of special dark missions. Contrary to expectation, they experience virtually no suffering there. They have a different purpose for being there. In Gashsharva they are meticulously groomed by the powers of Gagtungr for their next incarnation among humanity.
What could bring a human shelf to accept such a mission? Danton accepted his out of fear. Having descended after death through all the planes to the Pit of Shadanakar, he was, through the efforts of Urparp, taken up from there to Gashsharva and some time later was born yet again in Enrof. I don't know if he has died yet this time, but quite recently he was living in Russia, where in performing a new dark mission he brought several greatly gifted people to ruin. Sometimes a dark mission is accepted voluntarily, out of a thirst for power or blood, out of an inborn predisposition for evil. Such was the case, for example, with Tamerlane, who after death passed through the same circles as Danton, only more slowly. Raised up finally to Gashsharva, he had no choice but to accept a new mission. That mission was of far less importance than the first. Gagtungr loves to make a mockery of everyone, including his puppets.
The forces of Light are frequently forced to descend to Gashsharva. To descend thus is very painful but necessary: events in the struggle with Gagtungr's legions require it. The inhabitants of Gashsharva see their enemies penetrating into their world, but they are powerless to prevent it.
The Demonic Base comprises yet another world, a world of one time stream and one dimension. It is the Pit of Shadanakar, the plane of torment for demonic shelts and for those few people who have performed dark missions.
The Pit came into being at the very dawn of our bramfatura through the efforts of Gagtungr and other, more powerful dark forces. It is composed of the densest materiality possible. In Enrof, only the materiality of stellar cores or that of the monstrous bodies of our Galaxy known as "white dwarfs" can to any extent be likened to it. It is difficult to imagine how movement could take place under such conditions. It does, though it is movement that is painful to the highest degree. It is necessary for the maintenance of their level of energy; otherwise they are sucked into a kind of cavity that leads to an even more wretched place: the Pit of the Galaxy.
That all serves to clarify once and for all the relativity of the concept of incarnation. Demons, having incarnated in Gashsharva or on certain other planes of three and even four dimensions, sink to the Pit after death, where a new body, the densest possible, awaits them. That is the law of karma, whose double edge is turned back on the demons themselves. To replenish his energy, Gagtungr himself imbibes the radiations of their sufferings in the Pit. Why not rebel against the law of karma? It is that same karmic law which supplies them with energy during their incarnations on all the other planes. To fight the law would be tantamount to renouncing gavvakh as food, tantamount to entering into conflict with the entire demonic camp and the whole anticosmos – that is, it would be tantamount to ceasing to be a demon.
There is such a pit in every bramfatura in our Universe, except in those that are free of the demonic. Thus, there are millions of such pits in the Galaxy. Just as the two-dimensional cosmic planes of many anticosmoses or gashsharvas intersect along a common line, all the cosmic lines of galactic pits converge at a single point. The point is located in the Antares solar system. It is no coincidence that the star, also called the Heart of the Scorpion, served as the embodiment of sinister, even diabolical, powers in many mythologies of antiquity and the Middle Ages. That immense solar system is the focal point of the Galaxy's anti-God forces, their abode in the three-dimensional world. It is also a gigantic metabramfatura of demons, the anticosmos of our Milky Way to the degree that the anticosmos is manifested at all in Enrof. I have already said that bramfaturas in which demons have been victorious are not long-lived, and the large planet revolving around Antares that is presently energizing the Pit of Shadanakar will soon break up, but another will take its place. The one that energized the Pit at the time of Shadanakar's founding perished millions of years ago.
Antares is visible in our latitudes low on the southern horizon in late spring and summer, and many may remember well its brightly pulsating wine-red rays. Neither the sun nor any other heavenly bodies are visible from the Pit of Shadanakar – only motionless Antares, on which one end of the Pit rests. In the Pit, it appears infrared. In the opposite direction, the one-dimensional world fades as it approaches the surface of the Earth. Nothing is visible in that direction. That is where the cavity to the timeless Pit of the Galaxy lies concealed.
It is difficult to imagine how a body, denser than any other, could resemble the simplest thing we are capable of imagining: a kind of black line. It is even more difficult to conceive how it is that those beings retain the equivalent of sight and even touch. The most incomprehensible thing, I would think, is how they are able to see at all through that densest of atmospheres. It is from that atmosphere that they replenish their energy. Interaction between them is possible but extremely limited. Their suffering is beyond description.
Not only the Pit but all the worlds of the Demonic Base appeared, as I have mentioned, while the physical body of Shadanakar was cooling. Before the emergence of organic life in Enrof, Gagtungr centered his activities around attempts to establish a demonic plane on the surface of the Earth and, when that failed, to reinforce and expand Gashsharva and other planes connected with the lower layers of the crust, the magma, and the core of the planet. When organic life did emerge in Enrof, he focused his efforts on gaining sway over the animal realm – efforts that were in part successful – and on making the demiurges' laws more oppressive. The resultant of those two forces formed the basis for the laws of Nature and karma under which we live.
The Semitic religions are disposed to attribute to God responsibility for the severity of the laws. Surprising as it is, their severity itself, at least the severity of the laws of retribution, did not arouse any protest, and were not even recognized as overly harsh. Even the saints of Christian metacultures reconciled themselves with inscrutable calm to the idea of eternal suffering for sinners. Their minds were not troubled by the absurdity of eternal retribution for temporal evil, while their conscience – how I don't know – was appeased by the idea of everlasting immutability, that is, the inevitability of these laws. But that mode of reasoning and conscience is long past. The idea that the Law, in the form it has taken, was created according to God's will should seem blasphemous to us now.
Yes, not a hair of your head will be lost nor will a single leaf on a tree rustle except through the will of God. But we should understand that to mean not that the universal Law in its entirety is the manifestation of God's will but that the maturation of free wills that make up the Universe is sanctioned by God. The existence of a great many free wills gave rise to the possibility that some of them would deny God. Their denial led to their struggle with the forces of Light and to their creation of an anticosmos counterposed to the Cosmos of the Creator.
From the very moment life emerged in Enrof; Gagtungr and his horde left their imprint on the laws governing that life. They were unable to change the laws of the middle planes of Shadanakar, but many species and classes of animals and some planes of elementals fell under their sway, either wholly or in part. That is the origin of the duality of what we call Nature: beauty, spirituality, harmony, and peacefulness on the one hand; living beings killing each other on the other. Is it not obvious that both these aspects are equally real? Is there even one person with a brain and conscience, no matter how deeply he or she might love Nature, who would venture to say that its harmony eclipses and alleviates the boundless sea of suffering that is evident to the unprejudiced eye? And could even one person be found who, despite that sea of suffering – so glaring, so indisputable, so incessantly bombarding our ears with the groans and cries of living beings – has not even once in a while still experienced the inexplicable harmony and incomparable beauty of Nature? How is it that to this day people have failed to understand and resolve that crucial paradox? Is it not because in the West religious thought for more than twenty centuries has been held in thrall by the idea of God's absolute omnipotence and by consequent preconceptions about the oneness of Nature? And in the East, is it not because a deep-rooted philosophical monism has not permitted people to approach an understanding of Nature's duality?
4.2 The Worlds of Retribution
DURING, THE PREHISTORIC ERA, the demonic powers were occupied with slowing human development and preparing the planes of transphysical magma and the core to receive millions of human souls in the future. Later, during historical times, the shrastrs and Witzraor sakwalas were created. The majority of purgatories appeared at even later times.
Our survey of the worlds of retribution begins with the purgatories, because they are closer to us than the other planes. They are more commensurate with our customary notions, and in the case of a descent after death, it is in the purgatories that the descent begins. In the majority of cases, it ends there as well.
The word purgatory is borrowed from Catholicism, but many of the Catholic beliefs invested in it do not coincide with the overall picture of what is to be described. The term sheol could also have been used in reference to those planes, but the Judaic images of those shadowy lands of the dead will also find no parallel in my description.
The purgatories of the various metacultures differ somewhat from each other. Taken separately, each of them also undergoes substantial changes over the course of centuries. In addition, they took shape in different historical periods. There were none at all in the metacultures of antiquity, the Byzantine metaculture included. To be more precise, worlds of eternal suffering existed in their place, and a distinct echo of the mystical knowledge about planes of eternal suffering can be heard in the majority of ancient religions.
The oldest of the purgatories belongs to the Indian metaculture. It was the Indian Synclite that first attained the power of
Light necessary to prevent Gagtungr's forces from turning into planes of torment their sakwala of afterlife atonement – a sakwala that the Indian metaculture had inherited from the daemons and Titans, the most ancient of humankind. Later some planes in the metacultures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were converted into purgatories. The key role in that was played by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, His descent into the demonic worlds, and the struggle that ensued over several centuries between the Christian Synclites and the demons over mitigation of the Law of Retribution. But the struggle did not end in victory in the Byzantine metaculture. The enemy camp offered stubborn resistance. As a result, the Byzantine metaculture broke away from Enrof.
I mentioned before, in passing, the implications of the Byzantine Orthodox Church's refusal to embrace the idea of purgatories when it arose in the Western Church. The horrifying prospect of the eternal torments awaiting the soul of a sinner should be regarded as the impulse for the extreme asceticism with which the Byzantine religious spirit burned to the very end of its history. Yes, the eschatological depths, with all the extremes of its demonic cruelty, unfolded before the eyes of Byzantine prophets. One can only be surprised not at the desperate ascetic excesses of that culture but at the fact that such excesses did not take place in all the metacultures that lacked purgatories.
The first sheol in the Russian metaculture was created in the twelfth century, after having been converted from a plane of torment through the efforts of Christ. Its appearance has changed somewhat over time, and the karmic weights that draw the dead down into that world have changed as well. Be that as it may, the mechanics of the Law of Retribution have, of course, remained always and everywhere the same: it dictates that a violation of moral laws encumbers the ether body of the perpetrator. While such a person is still alive, the encumbered ether body remains afloat, as it were, on the surface of the three-dimensional world, with the physical body playing the role of life preserver. But as soon as that person's link is severed by death, the ether body begins to sink deeper and deeper, from plane to plane, until it reaches equilibrium with its surroundings.
These are the basic mechanics. But there are also beings who oversee its smooth operation: the enforcers of karma. Among the various demons of Shadanakar, they are a class unto themselves. They are newcomers. When the demonic hordes of the planet Daiya were expelled to the bramfatura of its moon, and the moon soon after broke up into a mass of dead fragments (asteroids), its demonic inhabitants scattered into space in search of a new haven. A group of them entered Shadanakar after concluding a sort of pact with Gagtungr's forces. They are beings of superior intellect, but they are as cold as ice emotionally. They know neither hate nor love, malice nor compassion. They assumed supervision of the mechanics of karma, replenishing their energy with emanations from the mental suffering of people who have been forced to descend to Skrivnus, Ladref, and Morod – the upper planes of the purgatories – after their life in Enrof. The enforcers of karma are immense in size, they are as translucent and grey as frosted glass, their bodies are rectangular, and, strangely enough, their faces somewhat resemble those of guard dogs: pointy ears and alert eyes. They enter into battle with the forces of Light only when those forces undertake to mitigate the laws of karma and to transform purgatories.
The first of the purgatories is called Skrivnus. It is the very picture of a stark, Godless world and society: a colorless landscape, a leaden grey sea that is always calm. Withered grass, stunted bushes, and moss call to mind our tundra. But at least in the spring, the tundra is covered with flowers. Not a single flower has sprouted from the soil of Skrivnus. Hollows surrounded by short but unscalable slopes serve as the dwelling places of the millions who were once people.
Skrivnus knows neither love nor hope nor joy nor religion nor art. Nor has it ever seen children. Interminable labor is interrupted only by sleep, but the sleep is without dreams and the labor is without creativity. Huge, frightful beings keep watch on the other side of the slopes. From time to time they toss out piles of objects that seem to float through the air. On its own, each object finds the one who is to work on it: mending old clothes no one needs, washing things that look like bottles caked in grease and dirt, stripping pieces of broken metal. Both work and sleep take place primarily in long barracks, sectioned off inside by waist partitions.
The inhabitants fully retain their human appearance, but their facial features are smudged and flattened. They remind one of identical-looking pancakes. Be that as it may, the memory of life in Enrof is not only preserved in the hearts of the inhabitants; it gnaws at them like the dream of paradise lost. The most relentless of the torments of Skrivnus is the weariness of interminable slavery, the tedium of the labor, and the absence of any hope for the future.
It is not a hopeful prospect, but the nightmare of an everpresent threat that offers the only seemingly realistic way out of that place. A black, box-like ship appears on the sea and quickly and noiselessly glides into shore. Its sighting sends the inhabitants into a horrified panic, since none of them can be sure that they will not be swallowed up in the pitch black of the ship's hold. Having rounded up a number of them – they whose karmic weight condemns them to suffer on deeper planes – the ship casts off. Those confined in the hold do not see the route being taken. They only sense their horizontal motion giving way to a spiraling descent, as if the ship were being sucked into a whirling maelstrom.
Skrivnus is restricted to the expiatory suffering of those whose conscience has not been sullied by the memory of grave sins or crimes but whose consciousness in Enrof was insulated from the will and influence of its shelf by a thick wall of worldly cares and exclusively material concerns.
The next plane resembles the previous one, but it is darker, as if it were suspended in nebulous murk on the edge of everlasting night. There are neither buildings nor crowds here. Everyone, however, is aware of the unseen proximity of a great many others: tracks like footprints betray their presence. That purgatory is called Ladref, and tens of millions spend a brief time there. Descent to Ladref is the consequence of religious skepticism, which does not give spirituality the power to penetrate into a person's essence and lighten his or her ether body.
They who are doomed to a further descent have the impression of falling asleep and then suddenly waking up in unfamiliar surroundings. In actual fact, demonic beings – the enforcers of karma – transport them while they are in a stupor into a different time stream, though the number of dimensions – three – remains constant in all the sheols.
Those expiating their karma find themselves in a darkness where only the soil and sparse equivalents of vegetation emit a dim phosphorescent light. Glowing cliffs do lend a grim beauty to the landscape in places. That is the last plane with vestiges of what we group under the name Nature. The planes that follow will consist solely of urban settings.
In Morod, that next plane, absolute silence reigns. Everyone in that world is convinced they are utterly alone, there being no signs of any other inhabitants. An overpowering feeling of forsakenness encases them like a suit of armor. In vain do they scramble about, pray, call for help, or seek out others – all are left alone with their own soul. But their souls are corrupt, their memories are sullied by the wrongs they did on Earth, and there is nothing more frightening for such souls than solitude and quiet. There, everyone comes to a full realization of the meaning and repercussions of the wrongs they committed on Earth and drains the cup of horror their sins instill. Nothing distracts the unfortunates from that endless internal monologue, not even the struggle for survival. There is no struggle – there is food all around in abundance in the form of certain kinds of soil. As for clothing, in the majority of planes, Morod included, the ether body itself radiates a material coating – a coating for which clothes are a substitute in our world. And if, in the worlds of Enlightenment, this coating is beautiful and radiant, the creative handicap of the inhabitants of Morod allows only for the creation of ether rags. In point of fact, the astral-ether essence of those undergoing expiation was already clothed in such tatters back in Ladref.
They whose conscience Morod does not cleanse can no longer expect a smooth passage into the next plane. Instead, they experience a sudden and terrifying plunge down into it. It is as if a quagmire opens up underneath the unfortunates and sucks them down: first their legs, then their bodies, and last their heads.
Our survey of the purgatories has arrived at Agr, a plane of black vapors, where the dark mirror images of the great cities of Enrof dot the landscape like islands. Agr, like all the purgatories, does not extend into outer space, so neither sun nor stars nor moon can be seen there. The sky appears as a solid firmament wrapped in constant night. Some objects glow of themselves; the ground also emits a dull glow, as if it were saturated with blood. There is one dominant color there, but we in Enrof are unable to see it. It gives an impression close to dark crimson and might well be the color we know as infrared.
I am only slightly acquainted with infra-Petersburg. As I recall, it also has a large river, but it is as black as ink, and there are buildings that emit a blood-red glow. It could, in a way, be likened to the light given off by the fires on Vasilievsky Island on national holidays, but it is a ghastly likeness. Those who have fallen into that world have retained their human features, but their bodies are deformed and repulsive. They are short in height and their movements have slowed. Their bodies no longer radiate any kind of material substitute for clothes, and unrelieved nakedness reigns everywhere. One of the torments of Agr is a feeling of impotent shame and a constant awareness of one's own wretched state. The inhabitants are also tormented by the beginnings of a stinging pity for others like them, as it dawns on them that they share the blame for their tragic fate.
The unfortunates are afflicted by a third torment: fear. It is instilled by volgras, demonic predators also present in Agr. When we had come near the building that constitutes the dark-ether body of the Engineer's Castle, I saw a huge creature the size of a dinosaur sitting motionless on its roof. It was a female, one droopy and flabby with grey, porous skin. Forlornly pressing a cheek to the tower and hugging it with its right paw, the poor thing was staring blankly into the distance with what appeared to be empty eye sockets. It seemed very unhappy. I had the impression it desperately wanted to cry out or howl, but it had no mouth or orifice of any kind. To feel pity for it, however, was in itself very dangerous. The crafty predator was on the lookout for prey, and any of those who had been humans were potential victims. The poor beings, wild with fear of the volgras and hardly daring to breathe, were hiding behind corners or skulking at the base of the buildings the monsters had chosen to rest on. To be eaten, or rather, to be sucked in by a volgra through its porous skin, is to die in Agr, but only to reappear even lower, in Bustvich or in horrible Rafag.
I later learned that there were a great many volgras, that they are to some degree intelligent, and that the primitive, dark civilization that characterizes Agr is their creation. They had virtually no mechanical devices to facilitate their labor. They erected the buildings that I saw all around by hand, using material similar to the trunks of California's giant redwoods, and every piece of that material, once it had been fixed to the other pieces, began to glow with a dull crimson light that illuminated virtually nothing. What connection exists between the buildings in the human cities of Enrof and the volgras' buildings in Agr remains a mystery to me.
They have no oral language, of course, but they do use a kind of sign language. They must have built the buildings for shelter from the brief showers that poured down every few minutes. The rain was black.
Also strange is the fact that volgras have three sexes, not two. The male impregnates the neuter, who carries the embryo for a period of time and then passes it on to the future mother.
But here and there silent buildings that do not glow at all dot the civilization like islands. The volgras did not go anywhere near them. There must have been something I could not see that was hindering them. Such buildings were standing on the site of St. Isaac's Cathedral and certain other churches in St. Petersburg. They are the only refuge where the tormented of Agr can feel safe from the volgras, if only for a short time. Who built them? When? Out of what? I do not know. Hunger did not permit the unfortunates to hide long in those shelters, but drove them out in search of the edible mold that grows on the base of buildings in that bleak city.
If those who were human are not doomed by a heavy karma to fall prey to a volgra and come to in the next world of descent, then they are destined sooner or later to undergo a transformation that will lift them up. The bodies of those who are nearing completion of their atonement gradually begin to change. They grow in height, the facial features they used to have begin to form anew, and the volgras do not dare go near them. The transformation itself takes place with the assistance of brothers and sisters from Heavenly Russia. Descending to Agr, they surround the ones who have completed their ordeal. Only those others who themselves will soon be raised from there in the same way are allowed to be in attendance. While they watch from the wings, it seems to them that the members of the Synclite lift those freed onto their wings or into the folds of glittering sheets. The volgras, gripped by mystic fear and trembling, watch from a distance, unable to understand what is happening.
The staircase of ascent is not closed to a single demonic monad, not even to volgras. But such a conversion requires a high level of consciousness, which is hardly ever in evidence there.
Something completely different is sometimes in evidence there instead. The landscape is broken in places by glowing puddles that resemble small pools of waste. There is something nauseating about the green in them. It is Bustvich, the next lowest plane, visible through Agr. Everything there is rotting, but nothing decomposes completely. The sensation of rotting alive combined with a spiritual lethargy constitutes the torment of Bustvich. They whose soul, encumbered by indulgence of unenlightened physical desires, did not fashion any kind of counterweight during life on Earth, unravel the knots of their karma in Bustvich. There the prisoner is gnawed at by an overpowering feeling of self disgust, because its ether body has taken the form of excrement. For, horrifying and revolting as it may be, Bustvich is essentially nothing more than the volgras' cesspool.
Physical torments begin to commingle with mental ones. The prisoners are extremely restricted in their mobility, and in their means of self-defense. But self-defense is of primary necessity for every one of them, for abiding with them there, between incarnations in one of the worlds of demonic elementals, are the souls of small, human-like demons coated in a dark ether body. They look like human worms, and are about the size of cats. They eat alive those who at one time were humans in Enrof, and they do it slowly, a little at a time.
At that time (that is, in 1949), the Emperor Paul I was in that plane's twin copy of the Engineer's Castle. (There is one in Bustvich as well.) He had already passed through a cycle of torments on deeper planes and was being slowly raised up to Drokkarg, the shrastr of Russian antihumankind. I was astonished by the harshness of his fate. But it was explained to me that if the agony of his murder on the night of March 1 2th had not relieved him of a part of his karmic weight and if instead he had continued to tyrannize the country right up until a death by natural causes, the weight of his crimes would have drawn him down even deeper, until he had reached Propulk, one of the most horrific of the planes of torment.
Bustvich is followed by the purgatory of Rafag, where the karmic consequences of betrayals and self-serving loyalty to tyrants are expunged. Rafag is the torment of constant affliction by debilitating illness of a sort that might find on our plane a distant parallel in cholera. Rafag is the last plane in which the landscape is even faintly reminiscent of our cities, but there are no shelters such as were scattered throughout Bustvich and Agr. The mantle of humanity's prayers does not reach Rafag; only the powers of the Synclites and upper hierarchies of Shadanakar can penetrate beyond it.
Angels of darkness rule over the lowest three purgatories.
Shim-big, the first of these planes, is a slow stream flowing through an inexpressibly oppressive world enclosed under a high vault. It is hard to tell what the source of its drab, colorless half-light is. A drizzle sprinkles on the stream, raising tiny bubbles on its surface. It is no longer the covering of the souls being tormented there but the souls themselves, in their decomposed ether bodies, that resemble wispy brown rags. They stumble back and forth, grabbing hold of whatever they can to keep from falling into the stream. It is not only fear that torments them. They are afflicted even more by a feeling of shame of unsurpassed intensity and by a desperate longing for their real body and for the soft, warm world – memories of the joys of life on Earth.
The feeling of pity also intensifies there.
In the meantime, the mouth of the stream can be seen up ahead. The stream itself, and the entire tunnel-shaped world, breaks off just as a subway tunnel breaks off where a trestle begins. But the water does not fall anywhere: the water and the banks and the vault – everything – dissolves into a grey, featureless void. Nobody can exist there, and there is not even a hint of any kind of ground or atmosphere. Only one thing does not disappear there: the spark of self-consciousness. In that purgatory, Drornn, the soul experiences the terrifying illusion of non-existence.
In Shim-big, atonement is done by those who were responsible for a few human deaths (even the deaths of criminals), whether by passing death sentences or by denouncing someone to the authorities. In Dromn can be found those whose violation of the Law would seem, in our view, incomparably lesser. The arithmetic of karma is strange indeed! What draws one down to Dromn is not heinous crimes or bloodshed but only the karmic consequences of a zealous atheism, an aggressive repudiation of spirituality, the active promotion of the false idea of the soul's mortality. The secret behind that surprising and seemingly disproportionate punishment is that those acts of will corked tight, as it were, the breathing holes of the soul while it was still in Enrof, resulting in an even greater encumbering of the ether essence than occurs even as the result of individual crimes taken separately. To prisoners of Dromn, it appears that nothing exists anywhere, that they themselves do not exist – just as they imagined it during their lives. Only after tremendous efforts taking up no brief span of time are they able to come to grips with the astonishing fact that, contrary to all reason and common sense, their conscious self does not disappear even there, in the void.
In so doing, they begin to understand, vaguely at first, that it could all have been very different if they had not chosen that nonexistence, or semi-nonexistence, themselves.
But the misery of self-inflicted aloneness that colors their stay in Dromn begins to give way, little by little, to alarm. The self feels as if it is being drawn somewhere down and to the side and as if it is turning from a dot into an elongated body pointed downward. The absence of any points of reference prevents it from knowing whether it is falling slowly or descending at a rapid speed. The only orientation it has is an inner voice, which howls louder than any logical thought, that it is moving neither up nor horizontally, but down.
Down below, an area of pink comes into view. For several seconds the color may even appear inviting. But then a blood-chilling guess takes hold of the unfortunate self: it realizes that it is falling helplessly into a calm sea of molten iron. It gains in weight, and it hits the molten-red surface of Fukabirn, the last plane in the sakwala of purgatories, and plunges deep down into it. Besides the burning sensation, the torment consists of a feeling of horror at descending into eternal torture, a descent that rings of finality.
Commencing after Fukabirn is the sakwala of transphysical magma. These circumscribed worlds coexist in three-dimensional space, though in different time streams, with belts of molten rock within the planet's crust. I would like to repeat and stress that in all the metacultures, except the Indian, the suffering in those worlds was without end until Jesus Christ carried out His liberating descent into them, which in Church tradition is called the descent of the Savior into the dead. From that moment on, it became possible, though only at the cost of tremendous efforts, for the forces of Light to extricate sufferers from those abysses after the period of time necessary for them to unravel the knots of their personal karma.
The first of the magmas is Okrus, the muddy bottom of Fukabirn.
As far back as in Dromn, the shelf had been left without any of its old coatings and a new bodily essence had begun to form. Its formation nears completion in Okrus, but there is nothing even remotely human in its appearance. It is a spherical object of animate inframetal.
Who are the torments of Fukabirn and Okrus for? There are actually few such sufferers. Millions suffered in Skrivous and Ladref, but hundreds, perhaps only dozens, suffer here. The condemnation of ideological enemies to horrible tortures, the condemnation of the innocent, the torment of the defenseless, the torture of children – that is what is expiated through suffering in Okrus and Fukabirn.
There, the tormented remember well the religious teachings and the warnings they were given on Earth. They are sensible of bodily pain as retribution but have already begun to recognize the dual nature of the Law and the demonic, not Divine, responsibility for its harshness. Their consciousness begins to waken. That is the Providential side of the Law, the ancient basis for it that was established by the demiurges back before Gagtungr's invasion of Shadanakar. The wakening of consciousness, the wakening of conscience, and the growth of spiritual thirst are those aspects of the Law of Retribution that the forces of Light did not cede to the dark forces and thanks to which the Law, despite everything, has not become an absolute evil.
In its infraphysical state, the magma is very similar to its physical counterpart. Prisoners there at first retain their freedom of movement, but there is as yet no need to make efforts to sustain their existence. They absorb energy from their surroundings automatically. The same is true of Gvegr, the second belt of magma, a motionless lava sea.
I would, however, like to remind the reader that suffering of any kind in Enrof alleviates torments in the afterlife, primarily by reducing their time span, but sometimes also through a change in their "quality." On the whole, the length of a soul's expiatory punishments after death is determined by the number of the victims that suffered from its actions in Enrof. Mass crimes result in descent to a lower plane of retribution. For example, Urkarvire can take the place of Okrus, or Propulk can take the place of Gvegr. For the bodily suffering that began in Fukabirn and increased in Okrus and Gvegr reaches its zenith on the next plane, the seething magma of Urkarvire. There, the corrupters of lofty and enlightened ideas, who bear the blame for warping the transphysical paths of thousands and millions, do atonement. Urkarvire likewise harbors those who are guilty of those heinous deeds known, in our dry, lifeless language, as conscious sadism – that is, not only did the criminals experience a feeling of pleasure from causing others suffering but they were fully aware of the immorality of the pleasure at the time. They were aware, but that did not prevent them from enjoying it, nor from indulging in it time and again.
Fortunately, time flows much more quickly there. For example, a world famous writer of modern times, who was not guilty of conscious sadism, of course, but of corrupting ideals, of perverting ideas and poisoning a great many minds with lies, had the impression that he had spent only a few days there, and not the ten years it was in Enrof time.
Next comes the hard magma of Propulk, the world of expiatory suffering for mass butchers, the instigators of bloody wars, and the torturers of entire peoples. All freedom of movement is lost. Their bodies feel as if they were lodged in a hard substance and pressed from all
sides. But even this horrible bodily suffering is surpassed by the suffering of the soul. They feel a stinging remorse and longing for God that is impossible on any of the planes above it. Fortunately, few descend to Propulk. Need I say that Yezhov or Beria’s cohorts are there? Amazingly, only a short while ago, Malyuta Skuratov was still suffering there. In the Propulk of the Western metacultures, not only Robespierre and Saint-Just but even some of the sixteenth-century inquisitors were still unraveling their karma.
The magma sakwala concludes with the superheavy magma of Yrl. The bodily suffering there is completely overshadowed by spiritual torment. Yrl was created for the punishment of those who in our legal tongue are called "repeat offenders": those who, having once already fallen to the magma and returned to Enrof, again encumbered themselves with unspeakable crimes.
The magmas end there.
Below the magmas begins the sakwala of worlds corresponding to the physical core of the planet, worlds common to all metacultures.
First come the infrared caves of Biask, the direst of the red infernos, as we might designate the entire staircase of planes from Fukabirn down to Biask. There, the body again metamorphoses, sprouting the semblance of a head and four limbs. But the gift of speech is lost, for there is no one with whom to converse. Each of the prisoners is held in solitary confinement and sees only his or her tormentors, who, strangely enough, resemble the chorts. Sitting here in Enrof in relative security, we can afford to chuckle as much as we like about people believing in those horned villains, but do not wish even your sworn enemy a closer acquaintance with them. The victims that fall to Biask number at most in the dozens, but because there is a great throng of chorts in need of their gavvakh, they wring gavvakh out of their victims by every means they are capable of devising.
The victims of Biask are those who in Enrof were tempters of the spirit. Such crimes are judged so harshly because they do great karmic damage to thousands of human souls. Even butchers at whose hands hundreds of people have died physically do not do as much harm as those about whom it is said in the Gospels: "whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea" (Matt.18:6). And even if Yaroslavsky or Bedny had been good people in their private lives, it would not have saved them from the fate that awaits tempters of the spirit in the afterlife.
Beneath Biask gape the vertical cracks of Amints. Those who fall there get snagged, as it were, and hang there completely helpless. And since the cracks lead down to Gashsharva, the unfortunates finds themselves hanging right over the lair of the demonic powers in Shadanakar. In Amiuts are those who combined conscious sadism with an immensity of heinous deeds.
But there are side tunnels leading from the vertical cracks of Amints. They are Ytrech, the planetary night which will last until the end of our planet's existence in Enrof – that is, until the end of the second (future) eon. There have been very few there, Ivan the Terrible, for instance. Further, there is yet another, very special plane. Only this plane could be equal to the crime of Judas Iscariot. It is called Zhursh, and no one except Judas has ever entered it.
It goes without saying that we do not have even the slightest inkling of the suffering experienced on the planes of the Core.
Our survey has now arrived at the graveyard of Shadanakar, the last of the planes. I could not clearly make out its name. Sometimes it sounded like Sufel, sometimes I thought it was closer to Sufetkh, and the question has remained unresolved in my mind. Those who persist in doing evil descend there from the lower planes of torment. Their shelts – what is left of them – are abandoned by their monads. The monads leave Shadanakar for good, to start anew in places, times, and forms beyond our conception. Yet that is still better than falling through the Pit of Shadanakar into the Pit of the Galaxy. At least in the former case the monad does not leave cosmic time.
But the shelt is alive. It is a conscious, albeit lesser, self. It is barely stirring in Sufetkh, as little by little the last of its energy expires. It is that same second death mentioned in the Holy Scriptures. A spark of consciousness flickers to the end, and the magnitude of its suffering surpasses even the imagination of the demons themselves. To this day, no one of Light, not even the Planetary Logos, has been able to penetrate into Sufetkh. It is sometimes visible to members of the Synclites, but from neighboring planes, not from within. At those times they can make out a desert, over which glows the dim purple sun of Gashsharva, Gagtungr's anticosmos.
Fortunately, in the entire history of humanity, the total number of monads that has fallen to Sufetkh does not exceed a few hundred. Of them, only a few have left any trace in history, for all the prominent chronically descending monads are brought to Gashsharva. Those for whom even Gagtungr has no use go to Sufetkh. I know of only one historical figure among them: Domitian, who in the incarnation following his fall to Propulk became Marshal Gilles de Retz, the one who at first was a comrade-inarms of Joan of Arc but was later a villain and sadist, who bathed in tubs made from the innards of children he had murdered. Cast down to Yrl, he soiled himself again in his next incarnation in Enrof with atrocities committed during the Inquisition. After his third death, he sliced through all the planes of the inferno for the third time, reached Sufetkh, and was ejected from Shadanakar like slag.
I know full well that the humanitarian spirit of our age would prefer to be presented with a very different picture from the one I have described in this chapter. Some will find it objectionable that, departures notwithstanding, my testimony seems to resemble too closely traditional images from historical Christianity. Others will be shocked by the savagery of the laws and by the bodily character of the horrible agonies endured on the planes of torment. But I am prepared to ask of the former: Did you seriously think that the teachings of the Fathers of the Church were based on nothing but figments of a spooked imagination? Only a mind as empty of spirit as a tractor or a rolling mill could suppose, for example, that we can reduce The Divine Comedy to a collection of artistic techniques, political diatribe, and poetic fantasy. In the first part of his book, Dante revealed the staircase of infraphysical planes extant in the Roman Catholic metaculture in the Middle Ages. One must learn to separate the impurities introduced into the picture to satisfy artistic demands or as the result of aberrations inherent to the age from the expression of genuine, unparalleled, and staggering transphysical revelation. And I do not consider it out of place to mention that the one who was Dante now numbers among the few great human spirits that have it within their power to penetrate unhindered down to the very Pit of Shadanakar.
As for those who are upset at the severity of the laws, I have only one thing to say: Work to enlighten them! Of course, it would be easier to sell the intellectual mindset of the humanitarian age on an image of so-called spiritual, rather than physical, torments: pangs of conscience, despair over the inability to love, and the like. Unfortunately, these barbaric laws were clearly established without consideration for the sentiments of the twentieth-century intelligentsia. It is true that spiritual suffering also plays a large role in the planes of descent. Essentially, only the great criminals of history are primarily subjected to bodily suffering, suffering that is, in addition, worse than any physical pain of ours, because ether pain surpasses the physical both in intensity and length. But we could also ask: Given the amount of pain these people caused their victims in Enrof, what pangs of conscience or, as Dostoyevsky thought, despair at not being able to love could counterbalance that mountain of suffering on the scales of the impartial Law of karma?
And each of us is free to join those who are working to mitigate that Law.
4.3 Shrastrs and Witzraors
I AM ABOU T TO DESCRIBE worlds of special significance for humanity, its history, and for all of Shadanakar. These are the worlds designed by the demonic forces to be frontline weapons in the realization of Gagtungr's global plan. They are, properly speaking, two sets of worlds, two sakwalas of infraphysical planes closely linked to one another.
I have already mentioned that within every metaculture there is a sort of antipode to its zatomis, a sort of demonic stronghold where the holy cities of the Synclites are reflected upside-down, as it were, in black mirrors. I am referring to shrastrs, the abodes of antihumankind.
Shrastrs are separate regions of a single four-dimensional world, but each region possesses its own unique number of time streams. The ring of shrastrs is metageologically connected with the lower layers of the Earth's crust, with its countervailing prominences, and they are the dark twins-antipodes to Eanna, Olympus, Paradise, Monsalvat, Heavenly Russia, and the other zatomis. The peaks and ridges of the countervailing prominences, which offset mountain ranges on the Earth's surface, point to the center of the planet. In Enrof, those regions are devoid of life: there is basalt, lava, and nothing else. But that is not true of the four-dimensional world. Below them, toward the center, is empty space – a reddish and pale orange cavity that blazes with darting waves of light and heat. The resultant of two gravities operates on the Earth's inner surface: gravity toward the crust and toward the core. The inhabitants' conception of up and down differs from ours. Infrapurple and infrared, almost black, luminaries glow motionless in the subterranean orangereddish sky – this is how Gashsharva and the planes of torment of the Core appear to the eye from the shrastrs. By the rays of those moons, the populous societies and monstrous hierarchies that manifest themselves before our eyes in the form of great states, tyrannical regimes, and the faceless vampires of global history live and fortify their strongholds.
What is Nature like there? What is the predominant landscape on the underside of the world? There are no blues and greens; they would not be visible to the inhabitants. Instead, they have two colors not visible to our eyes. There is also something resembling vegetation, but it is fiery and dreadful: clumps of huge, dark crimson bushes and large, waving flowers of flame that stand alone in places. The land is very rugged. Lakes and seas of white and pink lava dot the crust's surface. On the whole, the landscape has a distinctive geologic-urban character: gigantic cities with populations in the millions. In infra-Russia, for example, the chief city encompasses almost the entire countervailing prominence of the anti-Urals, another corresponds to the Caucasus, and cities are now under construction on the prominences countervailing the mountains of Kazakhstan and the Tien Shan. There are also cities situated beneath our lowlands, but they are less common, as those areas are for the most part flooded by lava.
Antihumankind basically consists of two very different races or species. The principal race is composed of small but highly intelligent beings that proceed through a circle of reincarnations in the shrastrs, where they assume a four-dimensional form somewhat reminiscent of ours. That form, the equivalent of our physical body, is called karrokh. It is composed of the materiality of those planes, which was created by the great demonic hierarchies. The shrastr inhabitants have upper and lower pairs of limbs, though they have a different number of fingers and toes than we do. In addition, they are equipped with something like wing membranes. Their stalked red eyes, bulging cylindrical heads, mouse-gray skin, and puckered, tube-like mouth might evoke disgust in humans. But they are beings of keen intellect and the builders of a civilization that in certain respects is more advanced than ours. They are called igvas.
Igvas first appeared in the shrastr of the Babylonian-Assyrian metaculture. Another race, the ancestors of the contemporary raruggs, of whom I will speak a little later, inhabited the older shrastrs. But I do not have a very clear notion of the actual origin of the igvas: we are dealing here with concepts so strange that they lie beyond the grasp of our reason. Thus, although no human monads are demonic by nature, it sometimes happens – albeit very seldom – that a person will at some point in his or her journey voluntarily become an igva. To do so requires a strong desire, tremendous clarity of mind, and singular ability in specific areas. Such was the founder of antihumankind, an individual who lived in a very real sense in Erech and Babylon, where he was a priest of Nergal, and behind whom stretched a long chain of incarnations in more ancient cultures and in the Titan humankind.
The igvas originated from the union of that person with Lilith. She is sometimes capable – though very rarely and only at the bidding of Gagtungr – of assuming a female form in denser worlds. When she appeared in Babylon, for human eyes it was as if she had suddenly materialized out of nowhere. Three people saw her: the future father of the igvas, and two others, one of whom went insane, the other of whom was put to death. The one for whom she had assumed that ghost-like physical form joined his astral, and then ether, body with hers. She then descended, all wrapped in flame, to an empty infraphysical plane where she disgorged the first pair of igvas. The father of the race did not incarnate again in the shrastrs or Enrof. He is now in Digm, and his contribution to the design and realization of the demonic plan is great indeed.
The igvas have a unisyllabic oral language. The human language it most closely resembles phonetically is probably Chinese, but because of the tube-like shape of the igvas' mouths, vowel sounds like "o," "u," and "u" predominate.
The igvas sometimes wear clothes, but they more often go about naked. Their extreme intellectualism has completely sterilized their sex life. Their method of procreation resembles the human method, but it is more unsightly. They copulate almost on the run, without feeling any need for privacy, for they have no feeling of shame. Their feelings of love, affection, and pity have remained in the embryonic stage. Brief unions take the place of families, and children are raised in minutely equipped and scrupulously systematized educational institutions.
Theirs is a slave-based society. It is composed of two classes: the upper intelligentsia – which includes scientists, engineers, clergy, and, if such a word can be used, administrators – and the subservient majority, who act only on the directions of the leadership. Yet even the leadership is strictly subordinate to the will of the so-called grand igvas (a kind of succession of high priests-emperors) and the monsters of the neighboring plane – the Witzraors.
The grand igvas are virtually the absolute rulers in every shrastr. A shrastr is neither a monarchy nor, of course, a theocracy; it is a satanocracy. The principle of dynastic succession is entirely alien to the igvas. Successors are systematically selected and prepared over the course of decades with astonishing forethought. The grand igvas' clarity of mind is immense, though they have an inverted – that is, demonic – conception of the world. They can see as far down as the anticosmos of the Universe. They are constantly being energized by Gagtungr himself. After their death, the grand igvas rise straight up to Digm.
It would be incorrect to say that the equivalent of our science and technology can be found in the shrastrs. Rather, it is our science and technology that are the equivalent of the igvas'. The different conditions and natural laws on that plane have dictated a scientific approach different from ours, but our scientific research methods and technological principles are very similar. Having far outstripped us in the field, they have knowledge of techniques and methods that smack of magic and that would seem like sorcery to many of us. But they also apply the principles of the screw, the wheel, and the rocket engine. They have vessels for traveling on the lakes of infralava. Ridiculous as it may seem, scheduled flights between shrastrs have long been in operation, and even hiking is popular – for exploration, not aesthetic, purposes, of course. Aviation is also advanced, though the igvas themselves can fly at great speeds, often hovering upside-down and clinging like flies to the ceilings and walls of buildings.
Science has allowed the igvas to penetrate to the Earth's surface as well. The surface is as lifeless and desolate on their infraphysical plane as the Moon's surface is on ours. Since the shrastr sakwala does not extend beyond the limits of our solar system, there are no stars in the sky. But the igvas have seen the planets and the Sun, though to them they look very different. The temperature in the shrastrs is very high (it would be unbearable for us) and therefore the Sun, which appears to the igvas as a pale infrared spot, emits far from sufficient heat for them. In spite of all the protective measures taken against the cold, the igva explorers suffered horribly on the Earth's surface, which is just as inhospitable for them as Antarctica is for us. They do have the prospect, however, of settling the surface of the planet, and not on their own plane, but on ours.
Their scientific instruments have already registered echoes of Enrof. It is possible, even almost inevitable, that in time they will make their presence known to us, and exchanges and contact will arise. In that way, they will of course try to manipulate humanity, for their most cherished hope, the dream that binds them, is to expand their realm, with the help of the Witzraors and Gagtungr, to include all the planes of Shadanakar. What is envisioned is the great Antigod of the future, who is being readied in Gashsharva for birth as a human in the not too distant future, and who will produce a pair of half-people, half-igvas in Enrof. They will be the origin of the igva race on our plane. Multiplying like flies, they are gradually to replace people, turning the Earth's surface into the abode of satanohumankind.
Igvas proceed through a circle of incarnations in the shrastrs, but in the intervals between them they all endure the same fate: their shelf and astral body fall into the Pit (no incarnation is possible in the superheavy materiality of the Pit without an astral body), speeding through the magma and Gashsharva down a tangent, as it were, so that they barely come into contact with them. During the descent, their ether body rapidly flakes apart. Cases of enlightenment among igvas are so rare as to be almost nonexistent, but in those cases they of course undergo a different fate in the afterlife. All of them, except some of the grand igvas, have an inverted view of God as a universal tyrant more terrible than Gagtungr. Christ, Who they hear of from the grand igvas, takes the place in their minds of the Antichrist – a violent and very dangerous despot. Generally speaking, everything is turned on its head. It is therefore natural that their religion primarily consists of ecstatic demon worship, radiations of which rise up to Gagtungr.
Do not think that the igvas' civilization is limited to science and technology. It also possesses some art forms. A gargantuan sculpture soars in front of the grandiose, cone-shaped temple in Drokkarg, the capital city of Russian antihumankind, a city situated in a hollowed-out mountain. It is a sculpture of a proto-igva riding a rarugg. If we apply our standards of measurement (and it is quite legitimate to do so in many cases), we could say that the eyes of the igva in that sculpture are vermilion-red stones the size of a two-storey house, while the dark crimson eyes of the rarugg are many times larger than that.
But the rational cast of the igvas' mind and their sterile emotional life have impeded the development of art. In conjunction with the overall grotesqueness of their tastes, all this has led their art down paths on which our aesthetic standards are not applicable. Architecture is the furthest advanced of art forms in the shrastrs. Their cities are composed of structures of superhuman size but bare geometric forms. Part of the cities are mountain sides, hollow inside and finished on the outside. Cubes, rhombuses, and truncated pyramids shine with finishes of red, gray, and brown. The constructivist school in human architecture may provide the reader with a mental picture of the style in the shrastrs. The powers of Light in Fongaranda needed to greatly intensify their inspiration of peoples' creative subconscious in order to keep human architecture from succumbing to the emanations rising out of the shrastrs and from turning the cities of Enrof into pitiful imitations of the igvas' stereometrical cities.
Music, predominantly percussion, blares in these cities as well. To our ears, it would sound like cacophony, but it does sometimes achieve rhythmic melodies capable of mesmerizing some of us, too. Dance plays an even bigger role in the life of the igvas, if we can speak of their appalling bacchanalias as dance. And their demon worship, which combines stunning light effects, the deafening roar of enormous instruments, and ecstatic flights of dance in four-dimensional space, turns into mass frenzies that attract angels of darkness. The energy radiated from it is imbibed by Gagtungr himself.
Besides the igvas, there are other beings dwelling in the shrastrs: raruggs. They are the aborigines of that inverted world, an ancient race who in part resemble centaurs, in part angels of darkness, but most of all, I think, flying dinosaurs. They fly, but not as pterodactyls once flew on their bat-like wings in Enrof. The raruggs' wings are powerful and jut straight out from the sides of their inordinately huge bodies. A creature of such size could not fly under the laws of gravity operating in Enrof.
It is no coincidence that they resemble dinosaurs, for raruggs are those same dinosaurs. After a protracted cycle of incarnations in the bodies of allosaurs, tyrannosaurs, and pterodactyls, some of them – the most predatory species – embarked on a path of further development on the infraphysical planes. Over millions of years they have achieved a degree of intelligence, but it is still a far cry from the acute intellectualism of the igvas. On the other hand, their physical strength and unbelievable emotional intensity are such that after a lengthy battle for that plane of existence the igvas were forced to reconcile themselves to coexistence with the raruggs. Soon after, a unique modus vivendi was drawn up between the two races, which subsequently grew into an alliance. The raruggs are now something like the intelligent warhorses of the igvas, their cavalry. The igvas themselves take part in wars only as a last resort. Under normal circumstances they exercise command, especially in the field of military technology.
There are two kinds of wars on the underside of the world. In the past, the history of those satanocracies to a significant extent boiled down to mutual rivalry and armed conflict. Of course, not all of humanity's wars were connected with battles in that dark world, but our great wars undoubtedly were. During major wars some shrastrs suffered catastrophic damage and even destruction. The situation has now become more complex: the higher demonic powers are making every effort to secure peace between the shrastrs. The reasons for that are very complex and will gradually be explained as we continue. The truly implacable war is being fought not between shrastrs but between igvas, raruggs, and Witzraors, on the one side, and the zatomis Synclites, angels, daemons, and demiurges of the suprapeoples on the other.
After a metaculture has concluded its historical cycle on Enrof, its shrastr is doomed to a bleak existence resembling a constant agony of hunger. Such shrastrs are no longer of any use to Gagtungr and are left to their fate1.
The igvas and raruggs degenerate, and the progress of science and equipment loses momentum. The destruction of the corresponding power-hungry state institutions in Enrof leads to a stoppage in the supply of the Witzraors' and igvas' food staple – which I will discuss in more detail a little further on. The starving shrastr inhabitants are forced to get by on petty theft, stealing food from their more prosperous neighbors, or else they struggle to survive on a "vegetarian diet." That is also the fate of some shrastrs whose metacultures still exist in Enrof, but whose Witzraors have been killed during internecine wars and whose great subterranean cities have been destroyed2.
There are four strong shrastrs still active today. They are FuChzhu, the Chinese shrastr, which is very old but has recently received a new boost in development; Yunukamn, the shrastr of the Roman Catholic metaculture,
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1 The following are the names of shrastrs of metacultures that have concluded their cycle in Enrof: Dabb – the shrastr of Atlantis, Bubgish – the shrastr of Golldwana, Setkh – the shrastr of ancient Egypt, Tartarus – the shrastr of the Greco-Romans, Nergal – the Babylonian-Assyrian shrastr, Devan – the shrastr of Iran, Zing – the shrastr of Jewry, Babylon – the shrastr of Byzantine. The last name is apparently based on a misinterpretation of symbols in the Apocalypse. The "Babylon" of Kevelation refers to the future satanohumankind, not to the Byzantine shrastr.
2 Aru – the shrastr of the Indomalaysian metaculture; Alfokk – the shrastr of the Muslim metaculture; and Tugibd – the shrastr of the Indian metaculture. The last two could still experience a renaissance in connection with the appearance of neo-Indian and neo-Muslim kins of witzraors.
But life in the shrastrs is very tightly intertwined with the existence of demonic beings of a completely different genus and scale, whose home planes form an adjoining sakwala, which closely interacts with the shrastr sakwala. Igvas and raruggs are unable to enter those planes, but the inhabitants of the adjoining sakwala – Witzraors – can and do cross – or to be more exact, slither – over into the igvas' cities.
They are powerful beings who play a role in history and metahistory as huge as their bodily dimensions. If we imagined the head of one of the creatures where Moscow is, its tentacles would reach to the sea. They move with breathtaking speed and are endowed with speech and great cunning. Their genesis is complex and double-sided. Every dynasty of Witzraors began as the fruit of the union between a karossa – that is, the individual national manifestations of Lilith, the Aphrodite Universalis of humanity – and the demiurges of suprapeoples. In the majority of metacultures, those beings were engendered by the will of the demiurges as defenders of the suprapeople from outside enemies. They first appeared in the Babylonian metaculture, whose demiurge attempted to set that progeny of his against the warlike egregors of Egypt and Media, who were threatening the very existence of the Babylonian suprapeople. But karossas carry the cursed seed of Gagtungr, which he planted long ago in the ether body of Lilith, whose individual national-cultural expressions they are. And the seed of Gagtungr doomed the first Witzraor, who at first obeyed the demiurge's will, to metamorphose soon after into the transphysical agent of
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1 An unprecedented metahistorical phenomenon was behind the Inquisition – the most horrible of all Gagtungt's progeny. There has been nothing like it before or since in any of the metacultures. It abided in Gashsharva, and a host of the forces of Light were engaged in battle with it. It was only in the eighteenth century that the coup de grace was administered by the great human spirit John the Evangelist, whereupon it was expelled from Shadanakar into the Pit of the Universe. The papacy is still not wholly impervious to the emanations of the demonic forces and thus even today has yet to hilly condemn that terrible period of history.
Babylonian state power. Its belligerency in turn forced the demiurges of other suprapeoples to resort to extreme measures to defend their countries in Enrof against the attacker. Those measures consisted of engendering the same kind of beings capable of withstanding the Babylonian Witzraor. In that way the monsters appeared in the Iranian and Jewish metacultures, and then in all the rest.
The procreation of these extremely aggressive and wretched beings takes place in a fashion reminiscent of budding. They have no gender. Immediately upon being budded, each child becomes the sworn enemy and potential slayer of its parent. That is how a sort of dynasty of Witzraors became established in metacultures – a child succeeding the parent after the latter is murdered and its heart devoured. Either a lone Witzraor or a parent Witzraor plus one or more of its progeny who fight a battle to the death with their sire exist simultaneously in the majority of metacultures. Witzraors battling and killing one another is one of the most monstrous spectacles of metahistory.
In the course of Russia's history, three ruling Witzraors have been supplanted, but each of them, before they died, had children that they managed to devour. In the North-Western metaculture, a different situation arose. There were, and are, several concurrent Witzraor dynasties, and that circumstance has had immense historical consequences for the whole world, for the existence of several such dynasties has hindered, and hinders now, the unification of the North-Western suprapeople into one whole. It was also the decisive factor in the outbreak of all the great European wars, as well as the two world wars.
Witzraors abide in a barren world similar to a steaming tundra. It is broken into individual regions in accordance with the borders of the metacultures. Every Witzraor can enter not only neighboring regions (only after first vanquishing the neighboring Witzraors, of course) but the shrastrs as well. It slithers in like a mountain of mist. At the sound of its voice, the igvas and raruggs quake as before a sovereign and despot, but at the same time they regard the Witzraor as their great champion against both other shrastrs and the forces of Light. How could they battle the hosts of the Synclites and the demiurge himself without it? It is these various conflicts – between Witzraors, and between each Witzraor and the demiurge and Synclite of the given metaculture – that represent, to a significant degree, the transphysical aspect of that process we perceive as politics and history.
Witzraors can see Enrof dimly, and they see our people and landscapes hazily and distortedly, but they love our world with a burning, unsatiable passion. They would like to incarnate here, but they cannot. They can see Gagtungr clearly and tremble before him like slaves. In their ignorance they consider the grand igvas mere agents of their will. In reality, the grand igvas see farther and deeper and know more than the Witzraors, and they endeavor to manipulate the Witzraors' greed, belligerence, and power in the interests of antihumankind.
How do the Witzraors replenish their energy? The mechanics of the process is difficult to explain. A Witzraor radiates a singular kind of psychic energy that penetrates into Enrof in huge quantities. Absorbed by the human subconscious, it manifests itself in human affairs as the spectrum of nationalist-state sentiments. Veneration of one's government (not of one's people or homeland, but of the government and its power), the identification of oneself as a participant in the grandiose life of the state, the worship of kings or leaders, a burning hatred for the enemy, pride in the material wealth and conquests of one's state, nationalism, belligerency, blood thirstiness, jingoism – all those feelings that enter into the range of human consciousness can only grow, swell, and hypertrophize thanks to the Witzraor's energy. But at the same time, human psyches, in a manner of speaking, enrich those discharges of energy with their own distinct additives. A unique mass psychoradiation of dual nature and reverse impetus results. It sinks through the Earth's crust, penetrates to the neighboring infraplanes, and forms a slimy red dew on the shrastr's soil. The igvas harvest it for the Witzraors – that is their chief duty in relation to them – and help themselves to the leftovers. Making do on a vegetarian diet is not only wearisome for them, but it also does not keep them from degenerating.
It is entirely possible that I have oversimplified or misrepresented the mechanics of the process. But its essence – Witzraors feeding off the psychoradiations of the masses, radiations specifically connected with human emotions directed toward the state – is not only a very real fact, but it is also the source of untold misfortunes.
Igvas cannot enter the Witzraors' planes, but see them from the outside, dimly, in shadows. Lying low in the shrastrs, they follow the battles between the Witzraor and demiurge and try with all their might to supply the infuriated demon with more energy-giving dew. They cannot see the demiurge, but the invisibility of a powerful being of Light capable of battling with the state demon itself instills them with terror and a keen hatred. They know that the death of the Witzraor will entail, besides the fall of the regime in Enrof (which might even cause them to rejoice, if a young, stronger regime were to succeed in its place), the failure of the Witzraor dynasty or the destruction of the shrastr. That would doom any belligerent regimes in the given metaculture to destruction, at least for many centuries to come.
Since I am seeking to share everything I know, even trivial details that would seem to be of no consequence, I will list the names of fallen Witzraor dynasties in a footnote (Unidr – the Witzraor of Babylon, Assyria, and Carthage; Forsuth – the Witzraor of Macedonia and Rome; Foshts – the Witzraor of Jewry; Ariman – the Witzraor of Iran (strange as it may seem to use that name in reference to the state demon); Kharada – the Witzraor of India; Efror – the Witzraor of the caliphates, premodern Turkey, and the Turko-Muslim Empire. I do not know the name of the Witzraors of Byzantium, or of the fairly weak Witzraors of the medieval states of Southeast Asia connected with the shrastr Aru), while the names of dynasties still in existence today are as follows: Istarra is the Witzraor of Spain; Nissush, of the Mongolian-Manchurian-Japanese dynasty; Lai-Chzhoi, the crossbreed of Nissush with Zhrugr of Russia, is at present coexisting with Nissush; Zhrugr itself; and lastly, Vaggag, the overall name for the NorthWestern Witzraors, several of whom, as I have mentioned, abide on the same plane simultaneously. There are now three: the English Ustr, the French Bartrad, and the Yugoslavian Charmich, a bud of Zhrugr that was cast onto their plane.
These Witzraors are not the first in their line – their dynasties arose in past centuries. But in the twentieth century, entirely new dynasties have also arisen from the union of the demiurges with karossas of metacultures existing in modern times. They are as follows: Shostr, the neo-Arab Witzraor, which was engendered after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and which has sought to assert itself in various Muslim states, beginning with Kemal's Turkey; Avardal, the neo-Indian Witzraor, engendered a few years ago out of that same crucial necessity of defending the metaculture; Stebing, the Witzraor of the United States of America, which has something tigerish about its appearance and wears a golden cone on its head; and Ukurmia, the neo-German Witzraor, engendered after the collapse of the Third Reich and the fall of the old Witzraor dynasty. The North-Western demiurge was forced to undertake that desperate measure as a last resort. The new Witzraor is less truculent than its predecessor; unheard-of efforts are being made to inspire it from very high worlds of Light. It is the first Witzraor to be given the opportunity to ascend, and there is something noble, even leonine, in its appearance.
To this day, no Witzraor has experienced anything in its afterlife other than falling to Uppum, the Rain of Eternal Misery. This is the hell reserved for Witzraors, which was created long ago by Gagtungr for the dragon of the proto-Mongolian metaculture, who had converted to Light. Later Uppum was locked tight, and rescue from there is impossible, at least in this eon.
It remains for me to say a few words about Drukkarg, the only shrastr that comes within range of my waking memory. A temple of approximately one kilometer in height stands in the center of the capital city of Drukkarg. I have already mentioned the statue of the proto-igva riding on a rarugg with outspread wings, and if we must consider the statue of the Bronze Horseman in St. Petersburg to be a distant likeness of that statue, then something entirely different yet familiar is transphysically connected with the temple: the mausoleum.
The capital city is girded by a ring-shaped citadel of concentric circles. Navna, the Collective Ideal Soul of Russia, languishes in one of them. Her plight has worsened under the third Zhrugr: a thick vault has been built over her. Now her radiant voice, a bluish glow the igvas and raruggs cannot see, shows but dimly here and there on the surface of the cyclopean walls. Outside Drukkarg, only the faithful in terrestrial Russia and the enlightened in Heavenly Russia can hear her voice.
Who is Navna? She is what unites Russians into one country; what calls and draws individual Russian souls higher and higher; what imparts to Russian art its inimitable fragrance; what stands behind the purest and most sublime female images in Russian fables, literature, and music; what evokes a longing in Russian hearts for the sublime, special charge entrusted to Russia alone – all that is Navna. Her collectivity resides in the fact that something from every Russian soul rises up to Navna, enters her, finds shelter in her, and merges with her self. Or to express it another way: a kind of spirit-energy present in every Russian person abides in Navna. Navna is the future bride of the Russian demiurge and the prisoner of Zhrugrs.
Zhrugr, like all Witzraors, cannot have any children besides the Zhrugr juniors that it sometimes buds. But something distantly resembling a union between it and Dingra, the Russian karossa, takes place when it imbibes individual Russian souls – or to be more exact, shelts – during physical sleep and casts them into the bosom of Dingra, where they are subjected to a crippling and spiritually sterilizing transformation. We perceive the effects of that in the psychic rebirth of those of our compatriots who have taken active part in the construction of the citadel.
Drokkarg has other inhabitants besides the raruggs and igvas: they whose life and work in Russian Enrof were tightly bound with the aggrandizement of the state, they who wielded great power and left their stamp on the fates of millions of souls. In Drokkarg they are captives and slaves, who are put to work on nonstop construction of the igvas' citadel. Nothing short of the death of Zhrugr and the destruction of Drukkarg will liberate them. Ivan III, for example, has been there since the very beginning of his afterlife, as have almost all the other monarchs, commanders, and state figures.
Are there any exceptions? Yes, there are. On the one hand are the tyrants: before entering Drokkarg they must spend centuries expiating their individual karma on deep planes of torment. Some of them, such as Ivan the Terrible, have already passed through those circles and are now in Drokkarg. Others, such as Paul I and Arakcheyev, are only now being raised from the depths of the magma. But there is also another category of exceptions, one insignificant in number: those monarchs who fashioned a counterweight to their individual state karma while still alive, doing so through passionate faith, divine mercy, kindness, or even suffering. Recall St. Vladimir, Vladimir Monomakh, Alexander Nevsky, Fyodor Ioannovich. Recall those for whom power, which was hardly in their grasp, proved to be a source of only suffering, loss, and even death: Fyodor Godunov, Ioann Antonovich. Many will be surprised to hear that Nicholas II was saved from Drukkarg by the suffering he underwent in Yekaterinburg. Alexander I, one of the most important figures in Russian metahistory, is in a category by himself. A separate chapter will be devoted to him.
There are approximately three hundred such prisoners in Drukkarg. They are human-like beings of immense size who resemble the ancient Titans. But there is no light in their faces as there was in the faces of the Titans. To the contrary, their faces seem to be consumed by a deep inner fire, and their bodies are coated in coarse, dark crimson material. They are chained to each other, and their work resembles the laying of stone, and this for the erection of ever more wings for the citadel. They are allowed time for only hurried naps. They feed on the infravegetation. Fear grips them in the presence of the Witzraor, who in the case of disobedience or rebellion can cast them down, like the igvas, into the Pit of Shadanakar. The history of Drukkarg has witnessed such incidents.
In the same way, Karl V, Napoleon, and almost all the monarchs, commanders, and state figures of North-West Europe and North America are Titan captives in Mudgabr. Gregory VII, Loyola, and the majority of the popes work as stone-layers in Yunukamn. Torquemada, who spent many centuries in Biask and Propulk, has only just been raised up to the lower purgatories.
In a special, impregnable dungeon, the rulers of Drukkarg incarcerate those Synclite members who were taken prisoner during battles between the shrastr forces and the forces of Light. No one can kill them – not Witzraors, not igvas. They languish there in a kind of life imprisonment, waiting for the inevitable fall, sooner or later, of that bastion of antihumankind.
| Further: | Books 5-6 Books 7-8 Books 9-10 Book 11 Book 12; dictionaries |