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 the zatomis, 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 its people, 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 Atlantis, 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 population of Sudan. 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 Atlantis 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 pro/o-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.