The igvas and raruggs degenerate, and scientific and technological progress 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 destroyed (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 Witzraors).
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, which has experienced a serious decline and is now quite backward but still active (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); Drukkarg, the shrastr of the Russian metaculture; and Mudgabr, the most powerful of the shrastrs, the underside of the great NorthWestern culture. The founder of Mudgabr was the human/igva Klingsor. In his last incarnation in Enrof, Klingsor was one of the anonymous instigators of Jesus Christ's crucifixion, the witting ally of Gagtungr behind the mask of a Pharisee and patriot. The anti-Monsalvat that he subsequently founded in no way resembles today those fanciful patriarchal images that belatedly entered Wagner's musical dramas from medieval legends. Nowhere has progress in igva science and civilization reached such heights as in Mudgabr. I may add that it was the igvas of that shrastr who first penetrated to the lifeless and desolate surface of the Earth on their plane.
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 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.