If a light snow floats down on a cool night, or trees and buildings are whitened by frost, the robust, clear, almost ecstatic joy we feel testifies to the proximity of the wondrous elementals of Nivenna. White expanses immaculate with a special, inexpressible purity-that is Nivenna, the land of elementals of frost, snowflakes, and fresh snowfalls. Frolicking in unearthly fun like that of the elves, they cover their beloved Earth with their veil. Why are we filled with such joy for life when myriads of silent white stars softly descend all around us? And why, when we see a wood or city park white with frost, do we experience a feeling that unites solemnity and lightness of heart, a rush of energy and delight, veneration and childlike joy? The elementals of Nivenna have a particularly tender love for those of us who have kept the eternal child alive in our heart; they greet such people with gladness and try to play with them. Even the excitement, youthful vigor, and rush of blood in the veins of children during snowball fights or tobogganing gives them pleasure.
Beside Nivenna is stern and somber Ahash, the plane of arctic and antarctic elementals, which are connected to the polar regions of our planet. Ahash extends into outer space, and from it is visible the Milky Way. The borders of both polar regions creep toward and away from the tropics as the seasons change.
The untamed spirit of those beings, with their penchant for jumping from crystal clear meditation to fury, with their sudden urges to build whole worlds of transphysical ice, with their love of gazing eye to eye into the endless depths of the metagalaxy, has left a striking mark on the physical environment of the polar basins. When the revolution of the Earth around the Sun brings winter to the Northern hemisphere and gives the elementals of Ahash access to the more populated parts of those continents, they come pouring in with physical masses of arctic air in train, battling with snowstorms and blizzards over field and forest, giving free reign to their joy from the heights of anti-cyclones.
They do not perceive Enrof in the same way we do. Nor do they perceive humans with the faculty of sight. But some among them are as predatory and as cold emotionally as Andersen's Snow Queen, and they represent a danger to humans. There are others that intuit the inner spirit of those of us who are akin to them in courage, daring, and fearlessness. They can love such people with a strange love incommensurate with ours. They cradle them on their snowy laps, open the way to the depths of their lands, guide them through the terrible majesty of the physical layers of their realm, and forgetting the incommensurability between their immensity and our physical smallness, are prepared to wrap them in a blanket of white to the lullabies of howling blizzards.
The last two planes also extend, like Ahash, into outer space: Diramn, which is connected to the stratospheric ocean of air and the belt of lower temperatures, and Sianna-the world visible to inner vision through the high- temperature zones that encompass our planet in the upper atmosphere. But the elementals that abide there are so immense and so alien to our way of thinking
that it is extremely difficult to gain an understanding of their essence. They are elementals of Light, but their light is a searing, perilous light. Only a human soul that has already risen to exceptional heights can gain admittance to their realm.
That concludes the sakwala of Lesser Elementals. They are, of course, lesser not in comparison with humans-many of them are far mightier than any individual human-but rather in comparison with the elementals of another sakwala, with the ascending staircase of Greater Elementals, the true planetary divinities, the sovereigns of our world. The lesser elementals tremble with joy at their breath. The majority of them are beautiful, supremely good beings of inexpressible majesty. But it is nearly impossible to speak of the landscapes of those planes and of the forms of those great beings, for they all exist simultaneously at a multitude of points on their planes.
The dominion of Vayamn, "the Lord of Blessed Wings," the embodied spirit of the air, stretches from the upper reaches of the atmosphere down to the deepest chasms. His brother, Ea (if I remember correctly, his other name is Vlarol), "the Lord of Life-Giving Waters," was worshiped long ago by the Greeks as Poseidon and by the Romans as Neptune. But the Babylonians grasped his grace and cosmic dimensions best of all, dedicating a magnificent cult to the guardian and keeper of the Earth's waters. Both spirits are on eternal guard over the sources of life all over the world-not only in Enrof but in many other sakwalas as well. Both are as old as water and air, and just as immaculate.
Povarn, the third brother, "the Lord of Flaming Body," is even older, for there is a profound reality behind the ancients' belief in Pluto and Yama. That terrifying lord of the subterranean magma is not the servant of Gagtungr; he will, however, be the last, it seems, of the Greater Elementals to undergo transformation, which occur at the end of the second eon.
There is also a fourth great brother, the youngest, Zaranda, «the Lord of the Animal World.» The tragic history of the animal realm in Enrof has left a deep, truly global mark of sorrow on his form. And no matter how historians try to explain the symbolism behind the Egyptian sphinx, metahistory will always regard it as an image of the one who combines in himself the nature of the «Great Animal» with wisdom far beyond the reach of human beings.
There are seven Greater Elementals in all. Two divine sisters divide the remaining spheres of power between themselves: Estira, «the Queen of Eternal Gardens», the mistress of the plant realms of Shadanakar, and Lilith, «the Aphrodite Universalis of Humanity».
Lilith plays an immense role in our lives. Like all the Greater Elementals, her abode is incommensurate with any of our forms and is indescribable, while her own form is boundless. Her variomaterial body exists simultaneously at a multitude of points on her plane, and only in rare instances does it assume a form that can be seen by human spiritual vision. I do not know the mechanics of the process, but I do know that the formation of any body in the worlds of dense materiality is impossible without the involvement of Lilith, with the exception of animals, whose species are forged by Zaranda. In all the other realms, it is Lilith that discharges that duty. She forges the family chain for humanity, and daemons, and for raruggs, igvas, and the inhabitants of Duggur in the demonic worlds. Every densely material body created with her assistance in the dark worlds is made of karrokh. That is why she is fully deserving of being considered the sculptress of our flesh. Human sexuality is inextricably bound with her being and influence. Whether it is she or her karossas, that power always presides over every act of human copulation, and while the embryo is in the womb, she is there.
At one time, long, long ago, that elemental became the spouse of the Prime Angel-that great Spirit that subsequently became the Logos of Shadanakar. Their union took place during the creation of the angelic planes, and Lilith became the proto-mother of that first humankind. But Gagtungr was able to infiltrate Lilith's world, and her body of subtle materiality absorbed a demonic element. This was a disaster of catastrophic proportions. From that time on, all family chains forged by her, be they Titan, daemon, or human, acquire something of that element. There is a term in Jewish mysticism - yetzerhare - that refers to the demon seed in humans. We will try using it in reference to that cursed seed planted in humans through Lilith, who carries it within herself and in her karossas to this day.