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.
5. The Structure of Shadanakar: Elementals
5.1. Demonic Elementals
Among the different variomaterial planes that make up Shadanakar, there are four sakwalas linked with what we call the natural elements. But in what way are they linked?
We are dealing here with a concept that almost defies rational explanation. It so happens that any area of the three-dimensional world, an area, say, of snow-covered mountain peaks, is not at all limited in purpose and meaning to what we perceive through our five senses-that is, it is not limited to those mountain peaks composed of gneiss, granite, and other rocks and covered by snow and ice. That three-dimensional area is, above and beyond that, a kind of hemisphere attached to another area that could also be called a hemisphere, but one with a different number of dimensions. Snow- covered mountain ranges, lifeless, inhospitable, and barren in their sterile magnificence, represent but one of two hemispheres, or one of two closely integrated planes. The other hemisphere (or, to be more precise, plane) differs in the number of its dimensions. It is a land of embodied spirits of stunning majesty, the monarchs of snowy peaks.
This plane is called Orliontana. It is Orliontana radiating through the three-dimensional rock and ice that evokes the feeling of august calm, power, and resplendence that snow-covered mountain peaks evoke in all who are even slightly susceptive to infusions of energy from the transphysical world through the medium of beauty. Viewed with spiritual vision, Orliontana is a land of mountain peaks in their spiritual glory. As for the summits visible to the naked eye, they are no less than the product of the awesome, multimillion-year creative life of those elementals of Orliontana. When human souls bearing the marks of prolonged exposure to atheism withdraw into seclusion amidst the translucent mountains of Olirna, it is the unobstructed view of the plane of Orliontana that enables them to rid themselves of the last vestiges of closeted ignorance and inner inertia and arrive at an understanding of the multiplaned reality and spiritual majesty of the Universe.
But in contrast to Orliontana, most of the planes of elementals are localized-that is, they do not extend far into outer space. To be more precise, they do not even extend as far as the limits of our solar system, as the worlds of the shrastrs do. For that reason no sky is visible from most of these planes. The planes of elementals themselves resemble oases in the midst of voids of space. Like the shrastrs, they are demarcated from each other by differences in the number of their time streams.
Elementals are those monads that proceed along their path of maturation in Shadanakar primarily within the realms of Nature. That fact notwithstanding, one should bear in mind that humanity in one of its aspects also represents a distinct realm of Nature. That aspect is manifested, though not exhausted, in those elemental forces seething within it and without which its existence is unthinkable. It should thus come as no surprise that there are also elementals linked not with Nature in the customary sense of the word but with humanity, with its elemental, natural aspect.
There are among elementals a great many spiritual entities of Light, there are demonic elementals, and there are also transitional groups whose essence has been tarnished in the course of their development. But one thing unites them alclass="underline" more than anyone else, they follow a path closely bound to the realms of Nature. That does not mean, however, that no elemental monad can ever incarnate in the form of a human, daemon, or angel during any leg of its journey. It is entirely possible, just as in times immemorial some human monads began to fashion forms for themselves from denser materialities not on human planes but in the sakwala of elementals or angels. But for them it was a comparatively brief phase. For individual elementals, incarnation in human or any other form is just as brief.
Excluding the animal realm and the tree world, we could say that elementals assume their densest form, their true embodiment, in those sakwalas that bear their name. The natural elements in Enrof-water, air, earth, vegetation, the mineral layers of magma, and lastly, arungvilta-prana, that «life force» that is a necessary component of all organic life in Enrof-are, for the most part, not the bodies of elementals but rather the outermost concentric circle of their habitats, which is permeated, manipulated, and transformed by them. The natural elements are the theater and source material for their creative work, for their fun and anger, for their battles, games, and love. The body proper of elementals is, for most, fluid: their bodily contours are changeable and interpenetrable. However, that is not true of all elementals, and in every such case I will make the necessary qualifications.
I am beginning with demonic elementals only because they are contiguous, through that same demonic nature of theirs, with the infraphysical planes, the description of which, thank heavens, we are preparing to take our leave of. Then, after a few words concerning the transitional group, we will with a measure of relief be able to bring this description of woeful or darkened planes to an end. We can then, after a description of the planes of elementals of Light, conclude our survey of the bramfatura with the very highest worlds, spiritually blazing in their unattainable heights, in the holy of holies of Shadanakar.
There exists a region-Shartamakhum-of rampageous and terrifying elementals of magma, which are to be virtually the last to undergo enlightenment. Shartamakhum should be regarded as the plane of embodiment of beings whose shelts go between incarnations to the infra-iron ocean of Fukabirn, though they do so without experiencing the suffering that is the lot of human souls that have fallen there. The physical magma is, as I have said, the outermost circle of their habitat during their incarnation in Shartamakhum, the theater and source material for their creative work, anger, and battles. During volcanic activity, earthquakes, or geological upheavals, the elementals of Shartamakhum shoot up from the subterranean depths of that plane to its surface, as it were. In so doing, they draw lava up to Enrof from under the ground, bringing death to all living things. But that is only an indirect, almost incidental consequence of their activities. They have no concern for living things. In fact, they are not even aware of their existence, and if they were, they would not know what to make of them. The real function of their activities should be looked for on an altogether different level, and it will become more evident if we imagine the effect on the Earth if activity in Shartamakhum had ceased millions of years ago.