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 devils of our legends 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 shelt 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.