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 When the process or event is completed, and a new era begins, the guard of seraphim is withdrawn.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.