Midsummer at Avebury

Midsummer at Avebury

Prelude

    Stonehenge at midwinter had been bleak. Wet, windy, with empty bellies, full of discomfort. Discomfort, though, had been appropriate to the purpose and the season. In some years the snow fell early, and there were those who saw this as a favorable omen, silently merging the landscape into the Great White. It was certainly more cheerful whilst the snow was fresh. Last year there had been no snow, but there had been cold winds, driving and eddying downpours of rain, hissing and keening around the Stones. Not even the small fire which Tradition permitted at the centre had been possible, nor would it's warmth have availed even those closest to it, although that indeed was not it's purpose. In some years there was an atmosphere of peace, even of joy and exaltation as the sun slowly arose in a clear still morning, beginning to strengthen for a new round of days, and the noble spirits amongst the recently dead made their passage to join it, opening the way and so assisting those souls and spirits of lesser capacity who could follow but not initiate. Last year had not been like that. No Great One had died recently, or been present at the ceremony to bless it from either side of the Portals of Life and Death. The atmosphere had reflected unquiet earthbound spirits, who did "rage, rage against the passing of the light" because they lacked sufficient inner light to make a good Passage. For them a different ceremony had been required. All night the drums had muttered, thundered, howled and growled in concert with the weather. The pipes had shrieked and moaned like lost souls themselves. The storm intensified, lightning flickered in the murky clouds. The Old Priest had writhed and leapt, apparently in a trance of frenzy, spittle and gibberish spilling from his rain-lashed lips, until with a great scream his foot had stamped and his staff struck the earth at the same time as a mighty clap of thunder and a lightning bolt which singed the air and temporarily seared the eyeballs of the participants,signaled the acceptance of the Gods.

Introduction

    Midsummer at Avebury was quite different. The weather was excellent, the landscape was dotted with crowds of cheerful people, talking, walking, watching and taking part in the sporting events, picnicing, playing with children, chaffering with the hucksters and applauding the performers of tricks and plays. All the fun of the Fair.This was the most popular of the annual festivals, attracting the largest crowds, and transacting the most public business most publicly. Private and public, death and life, winter and summer, this world and the Otherworld, each has its place and it's business and the requirements of all must be met.

    Alvin Wendover considered that Wessex was lucky. Through the favour of the Gods, and the work and wisdom of ancient men, long forgotten but still admired, Wessex and it's people had inherited the greatest and most famous and awe inspiring collection of megalithic monuments amongst the three kingdoms into which the Island of the Mighty was now divided, and he did not think there was a superior set in the rest of the world. Also, although not strictly megalithic, the exposed chalk of the Downs displayed the great hill figures and the eerie ramparts of the duns most impressively, shining white amidst the green, revealing the Great White of the Otherworld hinting of the accessibility of its allure and permanence within and underlying the mutability of the everyday world. Although not greatly talented or favoured, he himself had stood at the head of the White Horse and learned directly from the horse's mouth. He had entered the portal opened and guarded by the Long Man. In a minor capacity he helped to
restore and extend the great network of sacred places which mediated the Powers within the Land for the collective and individual benefit of those of the land. Much more recent than the very ancient times in which this relationship had been established and focused with sacred places had been the Evil Old Times when the sacred had been scorned, denied, derided, perverted and ignored. The Island of the Mighty had instead become a den of thieves, corpocrats and socialists, bureaucrats and parasitical invaders, avaricious, atheist or islamist, materialistic, canting, contemptuous, cruel and ultimately destructive first of others and finally of themselves. As in the old Grail story of the knights of an evil king who had raped and despoiled the fountain maidens whose bounty had at first been freely offered, so they had maltreated the land and it's inhabitants. Now, Alvin was one of those who worked at healing and correcting those imbalances and preventing a recurrence. He enjoyed the festival but he had more important business here.

His Excellency

    There was a fat jolly man with shrewd eyes above his cheerful smile and ready greetings who seemed to take considerable interest and enjoyment in the proceedings, moving easily through the gathering, leaving a good impression behind him, facilitated by his memory for names, faces and the circumstances of previous meetings and details of the lives, families and concerns of the people he greeted and who were happy to greet him. This was not quite a politician in search of votes - such creatures were extinct, although obviously capable of revival. This was  His Imperial Majesty's ambassador to the Kingdom of Wessex, His Excellency Dieter Schmitt. His Excellency, or 'Dieter' as he generally insisted in being called in the informal circumstances which he contrived and preferred, had a prodigious appetite for information, as well as for 'wine, women and song'. He made it his business as well as his pleasure to be as well informed as possible of the state of affairs in the kingdom. He certainly had a more complete and accurate picture of the numerical facts and physical capacities of the kingdom than had any of the
officials of the king, and he had a very good sense of the currents of ideas and feelings and of the relations among the powerful. This made him a very good advisor to both the Emperor and the King.

    Himself a nominal Catholic, a follower of His Holiness Karl II who was happily ensconced in the Papal Palace of Koln and enjoying a cosily caesaropapal relationship with his Imperial Majesty Ludwig IV, Dieter had been surprised to find that Germanic paganism was now much more influential in Wessex than it was in Germany. Instead of shrilly demanding crusades and conversions, missionaries and an army of occupation and extirpation, Dieter had quietly proceeded to promote interest in German kultur and history. This was actually a lot cheaper and more effective in fostering good relations, Germanophilia and gradual assimilation to the Empire. It had helped that Ludwig was personally no more interested in religion or matters spiritual than was his ambassador, and his government were fully occupied with war against the Moslems, and the administration of conquered territories, in which they welcomed the co-operation of the remaining weak European states. Dieter and his government had been far more interested in encouraging technical and economic development, trade, education and the avoidance of distracting conflict between the three English kingdoms, Wessex, Mercia and Yorkshire. They had been pleased to secure the support of a British Division, consisting of brigades from each of the kingdoms. This had owed much to the knowledge and diplomacy of Dieter and his colleagues in the other kingdoms. Old Romans would have recognised a client kingdom. Old India hands of the British Raj would have recognised an effective Resident in a Princely State. Shocked natives might later come to recognise just how complete could be the ascendency exercised over their rulers and their succession by the imperial power.

    His Excellency was acknowledged to be a good man to know. Not only was he affable and well informed, he was generous in entertaining and he dispensed scholarships and patronage. He helped mechanics to get training in Germany, engineers and businesses to find investors. He promoted the teaching of German to make these visits easier. The strict laws and prejudices against usury made it difficult to open the country to German banking, or even to promote local banks. Several times he received lectures on how Roman loans had enslaved the Britons, leading to Boudicca's rebellion, and obscure rants about the alleged role of German and American banks in causing the collapse of the Old Times. Some of the more traditionalist inclination regarded him with suspicion, and thought that his
influence tended to re-create the Old Times which they so despised and loathed. Most people were swayed by his charm and his generosity. Some were pleased to learn German and to take opportunities to study or travel or work in Germany and it's increasingly extensive domains, but not entirely for the obvious reasons. Just as in the Dark Ages missionaries from Britain and Ireland had spread Christianity through Germany, now to a lesser extent and in a much more discreet manner, certain English pagans took the opportunity to go to Germany, make the right contacts and strengthen paganism there.


    Richard Brown enjoyed visiting the Avebury festival with his family when business permitted. His wife Mary particularly liked the torchlight processions and ceremonies along the 'snakes' of stones leading to the centre. He was pleased by the happy atmosphere of the festival and the chance to discuss news and possible business with old friends and new acquaintances. After a picnic lunch his wife and their maid had taken the children to see more of the games, entertainments and knick-knack stalls, whilst Richard had taken a stroll to one of the better inns in the district, where he had met several acquaintances and had fallen into friendly discussion over cups or mugs of wine, beer or mead. Richard and his cousins held interests in a Mauretanian iron mine and an iron foundry near Bristol, which increasingly depended on coal shipped from Mercia or Yorkshire. He was interested to hear news which could indicate a change in demand for iron.

   James Fisher, a shipowner, was another member of the group. He owned several small ships which transported iron ore from Mauritania, recently seized by the forces of Wessex, and sugar, rum,
cotton and other tropical produce from the English and European plantations in the Windward and Leeward Islands. He was interested in possible expansion of trade routes.He had stories retailed from his captains and only a year or so out of date, about Brazil and it's war with the cannibalistic Mexicans, and the encounters of European and Brazilian traders in the Caribbean with the Republican Americans and fights with the ferocious Mexicans. Sometimes such gatherings would include businessmen from Mercia or Yorkshire taking the opportunity to combine the pleasure of visiting the famous Avebury Midsummer Festival with the chance of finding a little business or information.

  The group was discussing the prices and relative quality of the wines of Wessex and those of France, Portugal and Vandalia when Dieter Schmitt arrived. He already knew Richard and was soon at home with the group, ordering another round, and loudly proclaiming the superiority of the Rhineland wines of Germany, which he promised to let them try for themselves when they visited his Residence or attended one of the dinners which he regularly hosted. Indeed, he would be delighted if they all joined him for dinner in this very inn the next night, along with their spouses, when he would introduce them to the contents of several cases of wine which he had brought along hoping for just such an occasion to share them!

    The dinner was indeed a pleasant and relaxing event, a memorable addition to the pleasures of the Festival. Richard and his wife enjoyed the wines, and enjoyed the socialising even more. It was not only businessmen who were the guests of His Excellency. He was on good terms with prosperous farmers,landed gentry and officials, officers on leave, priests, poets, shamans, cousins of the King. Everyone who was anyone knew Dieter and drank deep of his hospitality. These meetings helped a lot of people who bore responsibility in different areas, economic, religious, administrative, military, political and cultural to meet and mingle more easily than would otherwise have been the case. Only a few of his many admiring guests saw this, admired the skill of his performance, contrasted it with that of the rather aloof and bookish King Harold V, whom most of his middle class subjects had only seen at a ceremonial
distance, and wondered who really ruled in Wessex or would do so in a few years time. There were  others, less obvious but perhaps more influential, determined that whoever ruled Wessex, it would be neither Dieter Schmitt, nor His Imperial Majesty. The Germans were admired and respected, particularly for their leadership in freeing Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East from the curse of Islam, but there were forces at work within this land which the Germans did not comprehend, and which would not easily submit to foreign domination.
      
Organistion and Events

    Mrs. Sally Sugden was especially busy at this time of year. She was the Organiser,in charge of the programme of ritual events at the Avebury Midsummer Festival. The High level rituals were, of course, not open to the public. The Stewards patrolled the vicinity to ensure their privacy. There were other celebrations and rituals, such as the dancing along the two 'snake' arms to the central circle, and the marriage ceremonies and the torchlight processions, in which the public were welcome to participate. The secular festivities went on for at least a week, centred on the solstice. The Festival was always opened by a procession around the sacred temenos and speeches by Sir Peter Churchward, the local lord and magistrate, representing the secular power, unless King Harold himself graced the occasion, and the various leading priests and priestesses, including herself. She maintained order in relation to the sacred side of affairs, and Sir Peter upheld secular justice. The Circle was always popular and in demand for all sorts of rituals and activities. She saw that clashes of scheduling were avoided, and kept a discreet eye on all that happened. The Spirits of Place were accepting of a range of formulae, beliefs and pantheons, although they had a firm identity of their own. Sally was intimately acquainted with them as she was also the Convener of the Wardens of Avebury, the group responsible for the daily spiritual practices communing with the spirits, and for the spiritual and physical maintenance of the site. All the well known sites of Wessex and the other kingdoms were in the keeping of such groups. The spiritual links between them were strong, but their Guardians often found it useful as well as pleasant to visit each other's sites for festivals, ceremonies and initiations.    
 
    Avebury was not only a single very large monument, but part of a whole 'ritual landscape'. Not only were the other sites maintained and the location of their own ceremonies, their influences conjoined. Many of the visitors to the Avebury Festival took the opportunity to visit places like Silbury Hill, West Kennet Longbarrow, and Stonehenge, for both sightseeing and ritual purposes. These linkages were an important part of what held each of the kingdoms together and formed a growing unity between them underneath the formal political situation.


    Colourful heraldry was becoming fashionable again, at least for ceremonial and festive occasions and for indications of property rights amongst the nobility and corporations, even if no longer so useful in combat, apart from incorporation into the badges and colours of military units. The Dragon Standard of Wessex flew proudly above a beautiful assemblage of flags, banners and heraldic emblems of the Guilds and Associations, Orders, Brotherhoods, Sororities, Companionships, county and municipal and less formal groupings which embodied the society of Wessex. When the King was present the Royal Standard of a golden wyvern or dragon on a scarlet background would fly over all the others. These emblems were more than decoration, they embodied the pride and love and loyalty and identity of
the people, much as the standards of the Roman legions had done. Those who studied the public mood took note of any lack of respect for these symbols, and would begin to investigate. This year the public mood, like the weather, was cheerful. 

    Amongst the entertainments were masques and mummers, and stock figures such as the heroic King Arthur and St. George and Thor. Amongst their evil opponents were figures such as the Moor, and also the Bankster, the Israeli and Uncle Sam who were burnt in effigy, to the delight of the crowds. Talks and demonstrations were also popular. James Fisher's grisly tales of the doings of larger than life characters in the Americas, or 'beyond the line', battling Mexican ghouls, seeking profit and adventure amongst corrupt Brazilians and haughty Americans, alternately chilling and stirring the blood of his listeners, were a great success. Whatever they lost in veracity was more than made up in drama.

    Other travelers, returning merchants and officers on leave, spoke of life in the commercial colonies of
Vandalia and trade in the Mediterranean, explorations in North Africa and investigation of the ancient monuments of Egypt, and the Middle East, now liberated from Moslem occupation, and prospering under German administration. Certain druids with the assistance of Irish colleagues were exploring the numerous megaliths and stone circles of the North African coastlands, including the great but little known stone circle, comparable to Stonehenge, situated at Mezorah, near Lixus in Morocco. There was a medieval legend that the stones of the 'Giant's Dance' had been brought long before from North Africa to Ireland, and then transferred to Stonehenge by Merlin the fabled enchanter. Thus both the Irish and the men of Wessex were interested in finding out what they could, and seeking respectful contact with the spirits of that land.  
 
    Over the preceding centuries Irish druids had been helpful in opening contact with the spirits of ancestors and the gods of the land at West Kennet and other sites which had been similar in function to Newgrange, and in strengthening such contacts, selecting and training the able, developing the ancestral contacts and enlivening the land. This skill had first been developed to a notable level by the Irish, and they had then assisted their neighbors in developing similar skills.   

    A school of sorcery had developed that dealt with the dead. Not only could they encourage rebirth of
appropriate souls and banish others, some could and did pursue enemies of their people beyond death, blasting and shriveling their souls to less than human status. They had also identified the links of Fate guiding the successive incarnations of the evil ones who had done so much to debase and destroy the Old People. They pursued them relentlessly, prevailing upon the Powers of Hel to deny them birth as humans, and to ensure that their souls spent billions of years of misery and degradation. These people were intense haters, disinclined to spend future lifetimes fighting the same foes revived. Less advanced levels had the ability to weaken the will of an enemy, spreading fear, confusion and despair. It took nothing from the skill and courage of the German forces to know, as did few, that their spectacular victories over Islam had been assisted by the secret help of Irish, Welsh and British mages demoralising and confusing the Moslem leadership.


His Majesty

    King Harold was a tall, thin, balding man in early middle age. Although diffident and reserved, quite unlike  His Excellency in appearance and manner, he was in fact a True King. He was not a ceremonial figurehead living a life of luxury encrusted boredom, a puppet moved and ventriloquised by crass and cunning politicians. He was the best sort of king - the mystic sort. He had completed the ordeals and rituals of kingship, not in any symbolic show, but in reality, so that the symbols he wielded had real effect. He had merged with the Land whilst still living, and the Powers of the Land had accepted him as Sovereign. The King and the Land were One. He experienced the timeless memory of the land and participated in the lives of the creatures that inhabited it. It was because he devoted so much effort to seeking further levels of insight and initiation that he had not attended the opening of the Avebury
Midsummer Festival this year. Seated around a table in a conference room in the Royal Palace at Winchester he had listened carefully to the reports of his ministers, and then listened to those of his advisers who had already attended the opening days of the Festival and heard their accounts of events, concerns and public mood. Now he murmured a quotation quietly and wryly to himself, "What should they know of England, who only England know?".  "Tell Sally I'll be there for the Closing Ceremony and will speak. Liaise with her in organising some suitable meetings." He nodded to his private secretary and turned away. Should he honour Mrs Sugden by appointing her as the Lady of Avebury? Was she yet up to the initiatory level required? Perhaps in a year or so if she continued to develop her spiritual talents as well as supervising the Midsummer Festivals competently. Now there were other things he wished to discuss with his Archmage.

    His Majesty was not naturally a socializer. Standing around making small talk with grasping merchants and false faced social climbers wearied and wilted him. He had more liking for many of the lower classes, but their narrowness, pettiness and coarseness were also trying. Nevertheless, he was their king and would seek to benefit them in whichever ways they could best understand. He had accepted his advisers' recommendation that he should meet his people more and become a better known focus for their loyalty and affection. He would attend a variety of meetings at the Festival, hobnob with many people, and at the closing ceremony he would make small awards and give public praise to many people for minor but worthy accomplishments, brought to his attention by his advisers, and the leaders of many of the associations, as well as by public request. This would be an occasion for him to wear a crown in ceremonial display, reminiscent of the medieval seasonal royal Courts where the King would meet and entertain his nobles and transact formal business. The crown, of course of gold often encrusted with jewels and sacred symbols, sparkled with light and was a visible symbol of the Royal Glory or 'body of light' only visible to psychics. The halos in depictions of saints had had a similar meaning. Kingship was both a sacred and a secular function. His Majesty would also attend with far less publicity, certain private meetings and initiations, for he had himself attained the degree of Stone King, who could mediate a deep sense of peace and cosmic consciousness to those who were appropriately prepared to receive it.

    This year, after the opening days, mainly devoted to commerce, entertainment and socialising, King Harold was present and took an important part in the ritual and religious activities, which after all, were the main point of the Midsummer Festival. He was known to be there, but was only visible to the public at the grand procession and ritual in which all could participate on midsummer's day. Most of his time was spent in more intense and private rituals and initiations of the more advanced grades of groups of the druidic/shamanic/priestly classes. He became the centre of attention in the closing days as he presided over a public meeting of the Witan, consisting of such notables of the kingdom as happened to be present, and where discreetly vetted members of the public could present petitions. There was little actual business to be discussed, but those who took an interest could see their government in action, and feel able to participate in their degree, or feel satisfied that their King and their rulers spiritual and temporal were accessible to their concerns. Although there was nothing like the old 'democracy' and no whining about 'rights' or 'minorities', and people had to be respectful, they were able to speak with
considerable freedom to the king and his ministers. Nor was the King afraid to move among his people. Unlike the Presidents and Prime Ministers of old who had hidden behind bodyguards and body doubles and only been present to carefully selected and heavily guarded audiences, because their evil natures and evil deeds caused them to live in fear of assassination, the King would have scorned such measures. He and his people were of one birth and one Land. He was not afraid to lay down his life for his people; for unlike the rulers of old who had devoted their peoples lives to their personal interests, his life was devoted to the service of his people and his Land. No one who was not of the land was present, and the people were not corrupted by such evil influences that they failed to recognise their emotional and spiritual bond to each other and to their ancestors and the powers of the land through the person of the King or would wish to harm themselves by injuring him, so His Majesty could move among and
converse with relative strangers without more than honorific guards.

    More popular by far than the ceremonies of government and the meetings with occasional petitioners or groups of notables and social climbers, was the huge Closing Day feast hosted by the King for all who wished to attend and eat and drink their fill at his expense. All did. There were far too many to fit in any one tent or inn, or even the mighty circle of the henge. The landscape was dotted with groups enjoying the hospitality. His Majesty and his leading ministers went from group to group, welcoming them, urging them to enjoy themselves. wishing them well for the coming year, and leaving discreetly before the proceedings became too boisterous. It was an event which added noticeably to the popularity of the King.     

Meetings

    Many people enjoyed the Festival and the chance meetings they encountered. Some meetings were not by chance. There were many family and local groups and associations which regularly met at the Festival, and there were more specialised Guilds and groups which arranged to meet there. These were not necessarily religious, although some liked to think that they were under spiritual or religious patronage, and maintained appropriate rites. Usually these meetings were in at inns or houses or encampments in the vicinity but not actually in the Avebury henge. Amongst these was the Guild of St. George. This was a combination of farming and military interests, under the notional patronage of the military saint who had been the patron of England since the Middle Ages, and whose cross had been it's flag, even when subsumed into the Union Jack.This had actually begun in Yorkshire, which had inherited the main use of this symbol, but it had naturally had it's appeal in the other kingdoms also.It's members wore white
vestments bearing the upright red cross on ceremonial occasions.The military members wore it with a small red sword in the upper right quadrant (left to an observer in front of it), which was in imitation of the emblem of the long destroyed City of London and it's military tradition and they had taken it's motto, Domine Dirige Nos. The agricultural members wore it with a red spade in the same place. Not surprisingly this was popular with both farmers and Thanes. Some pondered the connection between sword and spade, and the derivation of the suit of spades from 'spada', which had been Spanish for 'sword'. At the lower level, many soldiers came from rural backgrounds. The Thanes who provided the officer class, and many of the civil administrators were usually also landowners. Some of the same men would also offer prayers and sacrifices to Frey and Freyja for fertility and prosperity of their farms
and their families, and saw no objection to appealing to Thor or Odin as well as to St. Michael or St. George for help in battle. These people were prominent in the farming displays and competitions, and in the military demonstrations which were also popular with the public. There was strong interest in maintaining and improving farming techniques and the fertility and happiness of the crops and animals and wild creatures as well as the human inhabitants of the Land. Farmers' groups organised talks, demonstrations and competitions, and nature druids sought to find means of obtaining the co-operation of the spirits of nature, particularly the followers of the Blessed Crombie of Findhorn, who encouraged helpful rites and practices. Devotions to Frey and Freyja were also popular for similar reasons. Brigit or St. Bride was increasingly popular in the north, where long before she had been the goddess of the Brigantes, and Bran again had devotees among the druids.

    The John Barleycorns were a group with widespread affiliations. Superficially, devoted to convivial
drinking, and often amongst those attending the festivals and 'blots' of Saxon pagan groups - where many attendees got 'blotto' on the beer and mead and wine that were so copiously consumed; their inner membership was devoted to the very ancient belief and rituals of the dying and rising spirit. They produced food and beverages which they blessed and endeavored to assure embodied the helpful spirit of the Land and it's deities. These sacramental foods were thought to contribute to the physical and spiritual health of the 'wise' who ingested them. Naturally, they were not huckstered to the general public, but became available to those with the strongest spiritual and emotional connections to the Land. Travelers were thus able to maintain their vitality and vital connection to their land even when abroad and mainly dependent for their sustenance on the produce of other lands. Unwittingly, Dieter achieved something of a similar although weaker benefit through his consumption of the wines of his native
Rhineland.     

    The Sons of Wayland were also amongst those groups whose members met regularly at the Festival, although their ceremonial centre was Wayland's Smithy, further to the east. In addition to enjoying the festivities and ceremonies members took the chance to discuss technical matters amongst themselves. Some of the members were druids or shamans who were able to contact nature spirits. This year one of the most intense discussions concerned better and cheaper means of smelting and working iron. Issac Hughes, a short dour man and one of the most skilled iron-workers was at the centre of this discussion, among with John Wilkins a nature druid. The pair of them had spent years in Mauritania trying to focus the sun's heat with lenses, to raise working temperatures and economise on coal and coke. Wilkins tried to conjure fire and air elementals and have them raise the temperature and provide a strong draft for the furnace. Hughes had learned German and gone to Germany under Dieter's sponsorship, to study and
replicate their industrial techniques, but no hint of his current concerns was permitted to reach Dieter's ears. The Archmage and Sir Henry Tipton, a courtier close to the King, who took an interest in matters of security, had made that very clear. Hughes, Wilkins and their ilk also took a keen interest in the products of Norse and Swedish metal-crafting. These had a legendary tradition of fine workmanship and there were ancient tales and modern hints that they had bound spirits to create famous weapons. The Norse weapon-smiths and mages seldom ventured to visit the Avebury Midsummer Festival, so Hughes and Wilkins were not disappointed by their absence. They enjoyed the discussions with their fellow Sons of Wayland, considered who else might be able to help them, and planned their next experiments.


Royal responsibilities of a True King

    One of the private rituals in which the King participated was an initiation ceremony for the Order of the
Serpents, to which Alvin belonged. Alvin and a couple of other candidates who had also spent years performing spiritual exercises, had reached the point of attempting to arouse and make conscious contact with the living spirit within the land, and raise it to flow through their own bodies and perhaps raise their consciousness still further to a level of divinity. This was reminiscent of the old Egyptian Pharoahs' emblem of a cobra rising behind them and symbolised as a serpents head on their foreheads. These were the druid 'snakes' that St. Patrick was said to have driven from Ireland, thereby depriving it of it's heritage of wisdom. In India there had been similar depictions and the spiritual force had been known as kundalini. It was not incidental that a dragon or wyvern was the emblem of Wessex,flown over the heads of it's king and people. Amongst the Royal regalia was a copy of the Sutton Hoo helmet, which had a snake from the back of the head meeting a bird formed by the nose and eyebrows, face to face at about
the location of the 'third eye'. The original, along with much else as well as the British Museum, had of course been destroyed by the treacherous Israeli nuclear attack a millennium earlier. This ceremonial headgear appeared to be at least as much a numinous mask of power as a piece of battlegear. Not only did the King have the right to wear it as an emblem of Royalty, as a True King he actually had the ability which it portrayed and may have been intended to invoke. Hence, in the ritual of initiation within the sacred circles of Avebury, he was able to raise the power and induce it successfully in the candidates. After the ceremony the initiates processed around the circles and 'snakes' of stone, led by the King, introducing them to the spirits of the land and of their predecessors associated with each of the stones. This was a contact and communion which they could subsequently renew by themselves.
  
    The King and his advisers were responsible, to the gods and to the people, for both the physical and
spiritual welfare of their country. They watched over the circumstances and moods of all it's groups and of nature, seeking balancing adjustments as they and the spirits of the Land considered necessary. At this time they were generally satisfied with the condition of the people and of their land. The bulk of the people were content, happy in their relation to each other and to the powers of spirit. They held to simple pragmatic faiths, confident that their rulers maintained deeper relationships on their behalf. The mercantile and technical classes were more materialistic, opportunistic and self interested, less securely rooted in the Land. They could be vulnerable to the blandishments of Dieter and his ilk, but they were not inherently disloyal. The fact that Money no longer ruled was a major check on materialistic tendencies. It would be necessary to see that technical and economic changes and greater opportunities to amass great wealth abroad did not cause any great disruption in their society. Strong indications that charity was a virtue expected of the rich would help. The gentry and nobility also had greater knowledge of the world than the peasantry, and some could be swayed by ambition and hopes of advancement under the rule of the German Empire, but honour, pride of ancestry and love of the Land were still strong in them. A class of
rootless atheistical, egotistical intellectuals, in the old manner, would have been a problem if their poison had been allowed to corrupt the minds, manners and morals of the people; but intellectual as well as spiritual functions were now the province of the sacerdotal class of druids/priests/philosophers/shamans, who were the staunchest upholders of the spirits of the Land, because they had the greatest capacity and responsibility for dealing with them and mediating their influence to the people.The King was the keystone of the arch, holding it all together at the level that concerned each of the classes, and overall. Wessex was fortunate that he was a True King.

 
Aspirations

    On this occasion some of the Irish druids and 'birdmen', together with mages from Mercia and Yorkshire  were present at private meetings of the psychically and spiritually gifted and with the king. Their 'birdmen' astral travelers had more up to date news of the Americas, and of the rest of the world.The Republican Americans were respected to a certain extent by those who knew more of them from the reports of the 'birdmen', than the caricature of evil that entertained the public. Their tenacity in protecting and re-establishing their identity and institutions in the face of almost overwhelming assaults from the savage Mexicans, who had performed much the same role as had the Moslems in Europe, was admired, as was their implacability in slaughtering any such savages or mutant degenerates or potential troublemakers from the Coasts of Death that they encountered. On the other hand, they were regarded as too old fashioned to be of much relevance in the 'new world', since on the whole they were still very
materialistic and were recreating their immediate past as best they could, rather than developing a more spiritual society. The spiritual and temporal leaders of these Islands wished the current Americans well, but had no desire for closer contact with them. The popular loathing of the old time Americans, although crude, was soundly based. They were hated and despised not so much for what they may have done to others, as for what they had done to themselves, and through their cultural dominance encouraged in others. Like the Biblical Esau, they had sold their birthright for a 'mess of pottage', to Jacob whose name meant supplanter or deceiver. Failing to be true to themselves they could not fail to be false to others.

    Still, the Americans were not of immediate concern to the leaders of Wessex and the other British kingdoms. Eventually  the mercantile interests of Britain, Europe, the German Empire and Brazil would reach an accommodation with the Americans. They had a much greater project on hand. They were engaged in awakening the Land, making it aware of itself as a living entity, and of the various sacred centres on the land as senses or organs within it's body. Already their more advanced members of the druid class could experience such a common consciousness, and the King could go further. Not for nothing had there been an old saying, 'let our leader be our (spiritual) bridge'. Indeed the Popes had taken over this very title of Pontifex Maximus, chief bridge builder, from the old Roman priesthood, and not because of any special interest or proficiency in civil engineering. They hoped to encourage the reciprocal relation between the people and their land, which was already very much stronger than it had been in the Old Times. Now the objective was to strengthen the sense of identity of the Land and it's people in each of the Kingdom, and to have each regional identity contribute to and participate in the overall identity of Britannia, and further, to extend the concept to link the strong separate identities of the peoples and Lands of Europe and even the whole world. This, they hoped, would be a better foundation for co-operative action on both physical and spiritual levels than the old empires based on force and fraud. They had no desire to repeat those mistakes or the greed driven 'globalisation' which had destroyed the identities and livelihoods of so many, including those who supposed that they were benefiting from it, in order to create a small class of evil parasites who sucked the lifeblood out of the
peoples and lands of most of the earth, reducing everyone to miserable ghosts of what they could have been, for the malicious enjoyment of the very few who expressed the evil of the Old Times in the most concentrated form.They scorned those who had worshiped 'The Economy' as a supreme deity to whose service all other considerations had been sacrificed. They knew that the economy should serve the needs of the Land and the People, not the other way round. A good servant had been allowed to become a bad master, consuming like a Moloch, the 'children' or future hope of the foolish people of the Old Times. Neither had they any time for the feeble old scientific conceit of an abstract Gaia, expressing the interrelation of physical quantities only. They had confidence that their successors, if not themselves, would be able to rise to participation on still higher spiritual levels through their communion with the
Anima Mundi.
 

Departure

    The day after the Closing Day ceremonies and festivities people began to depart, slowly gathering their
families and possessions. Many were moving slowly and nursing hangovers. The roads away from Avebury were filled by throngs resuming their normal lives and business. The King and his entourage had departed before dawn, riding briskly to Winchester well ahead of the awakening of most of the people, and leaving servants to pack his pavilion and other baggage into carts which would not leave until the next day so as not to impede the passage of the public on their way home.

    At Avebury that midsummer, all those who had sought found something of value to them. At a popular level many people had enjoyed the festivities, the entertainment, the sporting competitions, the colourful displays, the public ceremonies, the chance to buy and sell, the social connections, the weather, the meetings gossip and news. Their identity and pride had been re-affirmed. At a ceremonial level, their participation in the seasonal cycle had been demonstrated and their loyalty to each other and the powers of earth and heaven had been renewed and strengthened via their attachment to their King. At a deeper level the rituals at this sacred place had invigorated the relationship with the Powers of heaven and earth, of those who could sustain it; and the initiations had introduced a few more worthy candidates into this relationship. The Land itself had been energised and brought closer to awakening as a unified consciousness, a consciousness in which at least some of the People could participate, and which provided an entry to more exalted states of cosmic consciousness for more advanced mystics such as the King.

    Watching the departure of great and small, Mrs. Sugden was contented. She and her assistants had worked hard and she was pleased that the Festival had been a success at every level. She hoped that next year's Festival would be just as good. For the present she looked forward to a resumption of her slower and less crowded routine, in the happy and peaceful presence of the Stones. 

    As he left the festival Alvin Wendover was very happy. As far as he was concerned, Midsummer at Avebury had been a great success. The occasion had  marked an important stage in His spiritual pilgrimage, and he now had wider vistas and responsibilities to survey and cultivate.

    It was another beautiful day. The sun was warm but a breeze kept it from becoming too hot, as the grass and flowers and crops and trees nodded and sparkled and a few wisps of clouds drifted like dreaming sylphs in the shining sky. There was an abiding sense of peace and joy, and those who noticed such things noticed that the Land itself was smiling.

Antipodean Antiphony

South of the Himalayas
  By the three thousandth year after Christ, although that scale of reckoning had long ceased to be used in the sub-continent, Kali's blood-drunkenness had passed, Shiva's manic dance of death had slowed to its' more usual pace and India's slow and timeless cycles of life had been resumed. Allah had retired from the field gravely hurt and his remaining supporters were only numerous and influential far to the south-east, beyond the reach of Indra's remaining thunderbolts. India and Pakistan had been spared the treacherous Israeli nuclear attack which had destroyed the major cities of Western Europe and the Eastern United States, but the subsequent Islamic frenzy had locked them into their own dance of death.

 God-intoxicated with certainty that military and celestial success was now guaranteed by the establishment of the Islamic Caliphate in Jerusalem, the Pakistanis had launched their suicidal jihad against their much larger and stronger neighbor. The consequences were predictable, but their fanaticism won the Pakistanis a greater measure of success than they had a right to expect. The major cities of northern India had been incinerated by the Pakistani missiles, and almost the whole of Pakistan had been turned into a radioactive desert by the Indian response. The Pakistani forces knew they would have no homes and families to which they could return; their sole hope and burning desire was to gain admittance to Allah's heaven by death in battle after killing as many infidels as possible; and 'though they were slain, they slew'.

 Naturally, the enthusiasm for slaughter had also affected or infected the couple of hundred million Moslems who already lived in India, so the 'inter-communal violence' made that which had happened at the time of independence from Britain appear trifling by comparison. It even exceeded in extent and ferocity the destruction which had resulted from the original Moslem invasion of India in the middle ages. There was no longer any government of Pakistan, apart from the leaders of its armies whilst they lasted, and indeed there was no longer any Pakistan to be governed.

  Indian government and military organisation was seriously crippled by the nuclear strikes, the military confusion and the civilian chaos, but it was not eliminated, and a very large and very populous land remained to be governed. Equally naturally, new leaders arose based on more or less tenuous control of armed force within particular areas; and when effective government was restored - they very largely were it, behind shriveled fig leaves of lip service to 'legitimacy' and 'democracy', 'community' or 'public service'. Indian politics has never been short of glib and ruthless rogues. Henceforth the various and mutable regions were independent de facto, although they professed de jure acknowledgment of the sovereignty of a mythical but prestigious central government, in the manner of India in the last centuries of Mughal suzerainty. Of course they bickered and fought amongst themselves, and none of these local regimes could avoid internal dissension, coups and rebellions. It would have been too much to expect that local people would be left to get on with peaceful lives; of course every form of violence and extortion, misery and misrule was rampant. Even that was not the end.

 The Moslem hordes of Bangladesh, originally East Pakistan, caught the jihad disease and invaded India from the other side. The whole north of India was roiled in strife. Blood streamed, it seemed, as copiously as the Ganges and the Indus. Indeed, both these famous rivers became polluted by radioactive material as well as by the usual rubbish, and the previously unusual detritus of war and massacre. From being life giving streams, these became death dealing streams, desolating their courses and estuaries.

  Lest it be thought that southern India, apart from the Moslem Tamil area, largely escaped the turmoil, the Moslems of Indonesia ensured that this was not so. Sensing plunder and prey, and seeking to assist their fellow Moslems in jihad, large but disorganized numbers of them took all available sea-craft and invaded Ceylon and south India. Here military forces and civilian authority were still mainly intact, the population was becoming both horrified and enraged; so they were warmly received. They managed to tie down local forces and prevent assistance being sent to the north. Enough new groups of invading bandits kept arriving to join other Moslem groups to ensure that death and destruction became commonplace. Where these roamed, pestilence and famine soon followed. Trouble continued for decades, but numbers and organisation gradually told. As Moslems were killed, even though at first they may have killed more than their own numbers, Hindu forces were gradually freed to concentrate against the remaining Moslems, and to defend against renewed assaults from Indonesia. As Moslem numbers were reduced and as relative peace was restored, the birthrate increasingly swung against the Moslems, so that their absolute and relative numbers declined in successive generations. Despite the distractions of bickering between the new rulers, enough energy remained focused on the Moslems, because of continuing outrage at their continued atrocities, to eventually reduce their numbers to insignificance. Indonesia's significance was likewise reduced by India's use of a few long range nuclear missiles to destroy Jakarta and several other cities, after which the flow of jihadis to India fell to a trickle, as Indonesia fell apart and the locals fell to killing each other.

  After several centuries like this, not much but the ability to manufacture smallarms had been left of the modernity, industrial and financial development and democracy of which those who ruled India before the Catastrophe had been so proud. There were no longer international stages on which politicians could posture and preen. There were no more international conferences at which bureaucrats and academics could boast and beg. There were no more investment fora where wily businessmen could meet their foreign counterparts to wrangle and outwit each other over opportunities for profitable exploitation at home and abroad. Foreign contacts had become difficult, even had anyone on either side of them been interested.

  Geographically the nuclear devastation of Pakistan and northern India had closed the usual access route by land to large scale movement, protecting and isolating the sub-continent and reinforcing it's ignorance and indifference to the rest of the world. For some time the rusting and rotting relics of the previous era might be seen. Children played in the ruins of factories, beggars and thieves squatted in decaying office towers and apartment blocks, peasants dug up concrete runways and highways to extend their farms.The chassis of an occasional car was sometimes to be seen being pulled as a cart by patient oxen. Slowly but inexorably, like vegetation overwhelming an abandoned estate, the eternal cadences of growth and decay resumed their sway over the life of the sub-continent, which went back to what it had known before the arrival of so many waves of interfering foreigners. The traditional caste system was as strong as ever and the people performed the ancestral rites, pieties and duties of their caste. Farmers farmed and paid taxes, artisans and merchants made and sold things, warriors fought each other and ruled the rest, priests prayed, performed religious rites and provided what education was available. There were also the wandering hordes of holy beggars, seeking alms from the people and mystical experience from divinity. The area, one could hardly say 'the country' any longer, was held together in a ramshackle kind of way, spiritually by it's Hindu culture and physically by the Indian Railways. The railways remained the largest non-local organization, they were the only means of long distance transport faster and more capacious than bullock carts, they had access to enough coal, wood and metal-working skills to keep this great 19th century British achievement operating for centuries after its builders had been forgotten. Indeed, railway workers became a well established set of sub-castes whose members followed their hereditary callings as religious duties.

  This was a country whose historical memory had ignored Alexander the Great, and recalled of his Bactrian Greek successors who had briefly conquered northern India almost to the delta of the Ganges, only that one had questioned a Buddhist missionary. It was thus inevitable that accurate historical records were not kept of events after the Catastrophe, and that there remained little historical sense at all. Those who had literacy beyond the compilation of day to day business and administrative records were more concerned with old religious stories than with more recent events, so the two were conflated and it was never clear whether an account of kings and gods hurling mighty weapons of mass destruction at each other's cities was a reference to the nuclear conflict with Pakistan, or whether this had been grafted on to a much more ancient religious story, or if so whether there had been any historical basis to the original event. So tales of flying machines and great armies battling and of the destruction of great cities by disease or lightning might have had some vague historical resonance, but were only remembered and taught in a timeless religious context.

  Physical access to the majestic mountains of the Himalayas had become far more difficult than it had been.This only strengthened the religious awe and mystical reverence in which these shining peaks were held, floating in the serene distance high over the hot, dirty, crowded lands of toiling and suffering humanity, a reminder of a higher world and for some, a call beyond the babel of tongues to seek escape from the wheel of rebirth. India's symbol of the wheel might be seen in operation at several levels, the great slow turning wheels of the bullock carts, the wheel of the law and Shiva Nataraj dancing upon the corpse of ignorance within his wheel of fire.

   Eternal India resumed it's dream, briefly and rudely interrupted, and the interruption then forgotten.


 Islands
  The great islands between Asia and Australia had been formed from a jumble of principalities into two countries, the mainly Christian Philippines and the mainly Moslem Indonesia. After the Catastrophe and the subsequent jihad against India, some part of which had also assaulted the shores of the Philippines like the wave of a tsunami,  which passes away after causing grievous hurt and damage; centrifugal and fissiparative forces prevailed. The islands relapsed into a confusion of quarreling states ruled by the usual colourful collection of cunning, ruthless and avaricious warlords. Overpopulation and deforestation had eliminated the original forest and it's topsoil. Although disease epidemics had reduced population and discouraged contact between islands, so that there was some regeneration of forests, most of the wildlife was long gone, and the people scratching out a living were much less happy and more impoverished than their remote ancestors had been. Piracy and every form of brigandage revived to further immiserate their neighbors and prey upon what commerce survived. These latter-day Dyaks and Boogeymen were as murderous and ferocious as their precursors had been. Their depredations spread to the international trade routes through the Straits of Malacca and between China and Australia, so they incurred retaliation from those areas. The Chinese navy escorted vessels through these waters whilst China still had significant trading links with Australia, but it was the Australians who found a more savage and effective solution.

 Australasia
  Australasia was not directly affected by the Catastrophe, but the effective disappearance of America and Western Europe was a nasty shock and a loss of economic and cultural contact for Australia and New Zealand. Much of their economic life was already directed towards Asia, so this persisted, although the exchange of raw materials for goods manufactured in China or Japan or the Eastern Tigers slowly lessened as world demand fell, and these countries underwent their own changes. Yet the decline was sufficiently long drawn out for this area to retain much of it's old way of life for much longer than elsewhere. They had plenty of raw materials and sufficient industrial capacity together with intellectual capital and stable productive societies to maintain their social integrity and political and military power, which although modest, was now relatively stronger.

  The Islamic Caliphate, and the Jihad it inspired around the world changed things. Although relatively minor compared to other places overrun by Islam, there were already sufficient Moslems living there to have formed a social cancer, whose attacks were greatly inflamed by the spillover from Indonesia. New Zealand was too far away to be much affected, although their evolution into a peaceful and forgotten backwater was obstructed by violence and agitation by Maoris and lefties.

  Australia was fortunate in presenting a vast expanse of desert towards Indonesia, and a long sea journey to it's fertile and populated areas. Consequently, small scale invasions and raids had little prospect of success, and large scale jihads were directed more towards India and the Philippines. The Islamic pinpricks combined with the painful shock of treachery from within as resident Moslems, infiltrators and lefty fellow-travelers took the opportunity to riot, rape, loot and slaughter in their accustomed manner, caused a strong revulsion towards them in the rest of the population, whose rage resulted in a fairly rapid extirpation of this vermin, and a determination to assist neighbors suffering from the Islamic plague.

  At first, Australian special forces launched a series of counter-raids on Islamic islands to the north. They made friends with the native tribes of New Guinea, whose ancestors had maintained a tradition of head-hunting and cannibalism, and encouraged and armed them to attempt to recover the western half of their island from the Islamic invaders of Indonesia. Successful raiding led to a revival of ancestral traditions. The longhouses of Papua soon were competitively decorated with numerous heads of Indonesians, and ceremonies seemed incomplete without a cannibal feast on the body parts of captured Moslems. The Australians soon recruited the cannibal Papuans to join them in attacking other islands. White men with blackened faces and black men with white clay patterns all over their almost naked bodies were equally terrifying symbols and manifestations of death to the local Indonesians, and the fear and awe which their ferocious raids caused soon spread far and wide. Jihadis and local forces came to oppose them, but the cannibal cooking pot proved to be an unpopular route to Paradise.

  This change in public mood went with a realization that resources were limited and that it was foolish to waste them on enemies and in promoting self destructive behavior. The lefty political media and academic establishment became shriller and more venomous as it saw it's own power and income under threat, which lessened public acceptance of it still further. The archetypal Aussie 'battler' had never had much sympathy for these people, and the changed circumstances strengthened the tough, self reliant, extrovert, anti-intellectual and physically oriented strain in the Australian national character. It's good humored mateyness was soured by a feeling of having been fooled and exploited and then attacked by people whom they had tried to help; so the man in the street became violently angry and determined to eliminate the problem. All Moslems, lefties and their favoured proteges came under threat of political and physical elimination.

  A turning point in the regeneration and re-assertion of the Aussie identity was marked by the burning of the Sydney Opera House, that well known landmark and symbol of the arty-farty lefty past. It had been the local refuge for the surviving liberal intelligentsia and their dependents, until the 'Fair-Dos-Mates' had driven the remaining scroungers, dole-bludgers, pommies, pinko-intellectuals, multi-cultis, media queers and any other un-Australian riff-raff remaining in Sydney into it and set it alight. The sight and sounds filled a spectacular night as those inside roasted and screamed, and those outside toasted them with cheap wine and screamed in delight, dancing around their 'barbies' as they consigned these blots on the physical and social landscape of fair Australia to everlasting flames. Nobody referred to the burning of the Cathars mingled with Catholics in the cathedral of Beziers in July 1209 during the Albigensian Crusade, but the attitude that God could sort them out was certainly held in common.

  A crucial factor in the development of the new Australia was the role of 'Dundee's Crocodiles'. These emerged from the special forces unit of a Colonel Dundee, and became very popular and politically influential, organising and carrying out many attacks on lefty targets at home as well as on Moslems in the islands that had been Indonesia. The old order of high taxation to support a politicised bureaucracy and nanny state replacing the family and subverting everything decent in order to impoverish the decent people and advance filth at their expense under the rubric of'political correctness', 'anti-racism' and other lefty inanities and insanities, was weakened by the economic decline and by the change of mood towards self-reliance and self-defence. The political and cultural elite, self chosen, became so detested and reviled that their grip on power began to weaken. Dundee's Crocodiles and similar groups cut their failing fingers from the levers of centralised power. A smaller bureaucracy, influenced or intimidated by other forces, was less responsive to their will, especially after some spectacular assassinations of senior officials and politicians and celebrities by those whom they had trusted to guard them. The era of large state organisations controlling the lives of their slavish subjects, was passing. 'Death from Dundee' or 'Death from the Deep' became a slogan which terrified the remaining lefties. The letters 'DFD' marked the end of many a leftist.

  The execution of evil lefties and the rectification of the crazy and perverted institutions they had created became tasks by means of which the Crocodiles gained honour and respect, and slowly undid the perversions of leftism, enabling a strong society to naturally re-grow. Slowly the institutions that had been colonised and perverted by lefties were cleared and cleansed. State bureaucrats who advanced or attempted to enforce lefty agenda were identified, intimidated or eliminated. At first the compliant and venal political class desperately tried to protect themselves and intimidate their opponents by the use of legal and illegal power. This led to more awakening, more resistance, more people finding convictions and the courage to live or die by them. Since the lefties were basically parasites on the productive labour of others, who had insinuated themselves deceptively into power, and used it to advance evil and insane ideas which corrupted the minds and morals of the people and degenerated their healthy society in the interests of anti-human parasites, they were bound to lose any remotely equal struggle in a society not yet corrupted to a terminal degree, once a large minority became organised and energised to oppose them. 

  Education, media and the arts were likewise slowly cleansed as more and more people became aware of their evil influence and eliminated the perpetrators. It was fascinating for many to see that so many of the vicious and vociferous 'anti-capitalists', 'anti-racists', 'anti-fascists', 'activists' and 'community organisers' 'evil rights against everything right brigades',and 'community leaders' turned out to be criminal trash financed by some of the richest people and assisted by sleazy lawyers, political shysters and power-hungry bureaucrats. Slowly, parallel institutions of justice,  information and assistance replaced the despised and crumbling institutions of the state. The lefty-corrupted formal legal system fell into confusion and abeyance  as lefty lawyers and judges were intimidated or eliminated, and Crocodile Courts took over the administration of their ideas of justice. Crooked financiers and industrialists and landowners who were found to have cheated the people and misused political contacts, lobbied for favourable laws and employed the power of the state to their personal advantage were not spared the wrath of the 'People', even those who had no connection with lefties. The lefties last refuges were the bureaucracies and centres of the big cities, but tax strikes, armed resistance to tax collection with increasingly compulsory substitute payments to the shadow state of the Crocodiles, the preponderance of armed force and effective fighting power shifting to the Crocodiles and the decline of urban in favour of rural populations and values left them with little hope. After the capture of these refuges and the slaughter of their 'refugees', the leaders of the Crocodiles proclaimed their victory and the substitution of their institutions for those of the deceased regime. An annual holiday was proclaimed and special celebrations were held throughout the land, at which those who with greater or lesser plausibility were accused of being leftists or beneficiaries of the old regime, were burnt alive in the manner of Guy Fawkes.

  The new or renewed Australia was an aggressively masculine culture. Shrinking violets soon withered or were blasted by it's heat. Dundee's Crocodiles and similar groups provided an organised initiation into warriorhood for many young men, teaching them endurance, comradeship, discipline, self-reliance, and how to overcome fear and weakness, as well as proficiency in the arts of killing and self-defence in the service of their people. Many proceeded to successful careers and achievements in other spheres. These Australians were not savages; although like Lawrence of Arabia, who could out-Bedu the Bedu, they could perform on equal terms with savages and win their respect. Intellect and culture were not abandoned, useful inventions continued to be made, including Tesla-type energy devices, which reduced reliance on centralised power systems. The basic institutions of society changed back from state bureaucracies and shrill lefty media to the family and mens' groups. Formal political organisations became much less important, power basically manifested through agreements within and between the mens' groups, whose leaders were in any case likely to be the formal politicians and whose younger members practically constituted the armed forces.

  Many of these men became expert at survival in the harsh Outback, with some assistance from the surviving Aborigines. Some became expert sailors voyaging afar in small boats, redeveloping the extreme sensitivity to natural conditions that Polynesian navigators had known long before. These skills were applied in the vast archipelago of Indonesia. Like their crocodile totem, these fearsome ambush predators brought death by sea and by land. They brought order also. They had little interest in looting or enslaving the locals, but they sought out and destroyed symbols and concentrations of Moslem power, wearing down by their elusive hit and run attacks, those that were too strong to be directly attacked. Garrisons were isolated, their supplies cut off, with most of the locals too terrified to do much to help them. The protection of the Crocodiles was soon besought by many villages, towns and small islands which found it more profitable and peaceable to accept a loose kind of Australian rule and hegemony in inter-island relations, and even to help them against post-Indonesian forces attempting to regain control over the territory. Attacks on those under the protection of the Crocodiles were swiftly and harshly punished. They permitted the people to more or less run their own affairs, occasionally deposing or beheading chiefs whose misrule produced too many complaints, but eschewing attempts to change local ways.

  Over time the Australian sphere of influence extended. They kept themselves honed for war by continuous interference in the squabbles of their neighbors. They attained effective control of more and more of the seas, and their reputation alone became a potent weapon. Eventually they were able to reach into the Philippines and revive what Christian resistance remained to Moslem aggression. They came to control much of the inter-island trade, and protected Australian exports there, but would not allow much in the way of commercial huckstering and deception.

   In the opposite direction they they extended their, rather more peaceful, influence, far across the Pacific. They made a practice of long voyages, for enjoyment, excitement, and to test themselves, more than for practical purposes. Many of them perished, but many survived, and the love of adventure persisted. Centuries passed and the Australians thrived. Clearly descended from the Old Time, they were no longer of it. They were much closer in attitude to a much older time, yet with less total emphasis on war. They had craft and industrial skills and literature different from those of the Heroic Age, but somewhat reminiscent. They had a tenuous contact with China. A few adventurers took the route - not just to Samarkand - through China and Russia, by rail, into mighty Germany and learned of developments in Europe and the Middle East, but few of their compatriots cared for such things. A handful of voyagers achieved round-the-world voyages, visiting all continents. Although feted as heroes, the peoples they had visited were of little interest to their public. The occasional voyagers to Central and Northern America found little to interest them. The cannibal Mexicans evoked only contempt. The ferocious Eskimo hunters were granted a wary respect, but the cold lands of the far north and their savage inhabitants held no lasting attractions. They might have been more at ease with the Republican Americans had the latter been less earnest, and had the Australians not inherited tales depicting the old Americans as the source of everything evil, so their rare encounters produced no meeting of minds.

   Some of their voyages touched South America. There, they found a thin population of sleepily superstitious savages who took no interest in them, apart from occasional efforts to murder them in the hope that their body parts would be effective ingredients in magical rites. Those people had lost even the legends of their remote forebears, which had told of Quetzalcoatl or Kukulcan and the white gods who had vanished or been driven into the western sea, and whose return they had long ceased to look for.

  By the year 3,000 A.D., and that calendrical system was still used in Australia, a new cycle of the ages was well under weigh. The old order had passed and been forgotten, but a new, more vigorous and virile age had arisen. It was as if, foretold as a riddle in the story of Samson, from the carcass of the old lion had come the honey bees.

The Portuguese Connection

The Portuguese connection

It was the Portuguese who spanned the Atlantic, once again. This time there were no deliberate and concerted voyages of discovery, no government sponsored expeditions, no search for a sea route to the spices and wealth of the East, avoiding the land routes blocked by Islam. There was no search for vague and legendary Christian allies such as Prester John, supposedly of great power and fighting on the far side of Moslem territory. There was no thirst for the knowledge and glory to be found in exploring the unknown. There was no expectation of discovering vast wealth or of obtaining honour and prestige from exploring unknown regions. The shape of the world and the peoples likely to be found on each continent was known, at least approximately, and at least by the few intellectuals whose business it was, and who would have been consulted by any ruler or merchant-prince contemplating such a voyage, even though it was centuries since there had been any contact with them. Governments, not just in Europe but around the world wherever civilised societies survived, felt no loss at this absence of contact with distant peoples who had no relevance to their immediate concerns of power, profit and prestige, and no need to renew contact with them. People who owned ships wanted to use them as they were intended, for the practical business of making a living from trade and fishing. They would not waste money on long, possibly dangerous, and almost certainly futile voyages when there was no reasonable hope of making a large profit, even though the possible destinations were at least roughly known. Their men felt the same. Sailors and fishermen lived a hard life, and always had. They could be motivated , just as others had been, by greed for God Gold and Glory - not necessarily in that order, but otherwise would not have been willing to risk their lives and livelihoods on pointless voyages.

Thus when contact was renewed it was as wispy and uncertain as tendrils of sea mist, there, gone, renewed unpredictably elsewhere, silent and un-noticed by the great ones of the world. There were no celebrations, no public praise fame or reward for the achievement, which was solely the business of those involved, ancillary to their main business, and only mentioned in passing to their friends. It was decades before rumours reached the ears of the rich and powerful, to whom it was of little interest. A few academics, youthful wandering scholars and antiquarian romantics were more interested and would like to have gone there, but there were no regular voyages, no trading routes and no one to apply to for passage any more than there were to Atlantis, Hy-Breasil, Tir-n'an-Og, Fairyland, the Garden of Eden or other legendary regions with which such tales and destinations were likely to be confused.

What happened was that crossings of the South Atlantic were at first accidents of weather, and then occasional supplements to the small-scale business of trading along the west coast of Africa. There were a few small ships which gradually extended their range along the coast , seeking to eke out a living by trading cheap and colourful cloth, domestic utensils of wood clay and iron, small mirrors and trumpery decorations, pins, needles, thread and ribbons, beads and jewellery and other such trifles as appealed to local tastes and pockets, in exchange for local produce, chiefly bananas, coconuts, and fish dried and salted to the traditional Portuguese taste and as rations capable of keeping for some time. There was no great profit or interest in this humble trading by a few sea-peddlers, who also engaged in a little local trading between towns or villages along the coast. This was a life exposed to more than the usual dangers. In addition to the perils of the sea there was exposure to an enervating climate, where tropical diseases were once again rife. Europe was somewhat protected from epidemics brought back by these traders by the fact that the slow voyages exceeded the incubation time of the diseases, so ships that were infected were unlikely to return as the crew died before reaching home, and quarantine procedures at ports kept any that reached home from spreading their diseases before they died. Theft and murder by the volatile natives also contributed to the death toll, so this remained a small and unattractive trading route.

In the course of time these traders reached what long before had been Angola, and encountered natives who spoke a version of Portuguese. This enabled some of the traders to move inland and make further contacts. Gradually some of them inter-married with the natives and became local traders in and between settlements, with the advantage of access to somewhat exotic foreign products, so they became a successful local merchant class. This was a somewhat precarious position, suspected of exploitation, targets of jealousy and fear that they might be dangerous witches, dependent on the protection of local rulers who had to be kept well bribed. It did however give them access to diamonds. Ages earlier Angola and the adjacent region of Kasai in what had been Zaire or the Belgian Congo had produced a lot of diamonds, and there were still some to be found. There was no longer an organised diamond mining industry, no exports of stones via a regulated monopoly, no cottage industry of digging them out by hand and smuggling them abroad, no knowledge of diamond cutting and polishing, only a cursory and less sophisticated appreciation of them as shiny baubles than was still possible elsewhere. A trickle of these curiosities was slowly obtained from people who found or traded them for local value, until they reached those who suspected that if they were really diamonds they would be of much more value in Europe, and who had the connections to test the notion. Still further south, along the dangerous desert coast of what had been Namibia or South West Africa, diamonds were still washed up by the sea. Some of these also came into the hands of partly Portuguese traders, by direct forays along the coast as well as by trade.

Gradually these stones went to Europe where it was still possible to have them assessed, cut and polished, the better ones thereby increasing enormously in value. There was no great boom in diamond mining, no sudden hysteria or diamond mania, only a slow but steady rise in the wealth and social status of those families connected to the previously humble itinerant Portuguese traders. Europe was increasingly prosperous, freed of the Islamic yoke and protected by the German empire, or just 'the Empire', as the Second Holy Roman Empire of the German People was more colloquially known. There was scope for expenditure on luxuries and for investment in highly portable assets. If there was curiosity felt by outsiders about the source of these diamonds and the basis of the prosperity of Portugal's sea-peddlers, it went unsatisfied and the connection unnoticed.

This increased availability of diamonds was important to the tale because there was no other small and portable store of wealth, acceptable in other distant but reasonably civilised countries as a means of exchange. Gold and silver were no longer mined in significant quantities in Europe, previous stores having drained to the East, or in less polite terms, been looted by the Moslems. Fiat paper currencies, especially the mighty German Reichmark, were adequate for local use, but would not prove acceptable to distant people who had no prospect of spending them in Europe or on European produce, and no desire to exchange their goods for pretty pieces of foreign paper. Diamonds were still mined, cut and valued in Brazil, so the availability of raw or cut diamonds gave the possibility of commercial exchange for the coffee, sugar and other tropical produce of Brazil's plantations when the possibility arose.

The traders heard stories that other Portuguese speaking seamen had in previous centuries visited and raided the African coast. It was not even clear whether these were relatively recent visitors or stories of the very much older slave trade to America. In any case, a few of the traders decided to try their luck in crossing the Atlantic to Brazil in hopes of extending their trading route and in curiosity as to whether they would still find fellow Portuguese speakers with whom to talk and trade. Little came of these early contacts because diamonds were not yet available, and would have been beyond the means of these poor men even if they had been available. They found their wares for the African trade were not much in demand because equivalent locally produced items were already available. They brought back a little coffee and sugar and an understanding that the Brazilians were stronger, richer, more numerous and ruled a vastly greater area than the Portuguese.It would not be prudent to attempt to rob them, and for lack of anything of value to exchange, trade would be difficult or impossible. A little coasting trade might be possible, serving the more remote and thinly settled portions of the immense South American coastline, and it would be a bit safer and more comfortable, but even less profitable than the African coastal trade.

Some Brazilian slave traders had in earlier centuries raided and traded with the islands of the Caribbean and the coasts of Africa when there was still a demand for slaves on the growing plantations. This was no longer profitable because of the contraction of the population and of economic demand, and the fact that the existing black population of Brazil was more than adequate to supply any demand for labour.When the intermittent visits of the first Portuguese traders came to the notice of the rich and powerful in Brazil, they were not very interested. They quickly saw that the Portuguese were poor and weak. They had little with which to trade. There would be no point in trying to raid or even establish diplomatic relations with Portugal, particularly if behind them stood a protector as powerful as the Germans were said to be. They were mildly interested to hear of the spectacular German military successes in driving Islam out of Europe and conquering the Middle East and North Africa and were willing to applaud them from a distance. There were of course a few who would have liked to visit Europe, but that was not yet practical.

Slowly, as diamonds enriched the more fortunate of the Portuguese traders, they began to visit Brazil from curiosity and in hope of establishing profitable contacts.A trickle of cargoes of coffee, sugar, rum and other tropical produce began to reach Europe and further enrich the traders. In due course, as contacts and trust developed, voyages between Portugal and Brazil became fairly regular and it became possible for passengers to travel with reasonable expectations of a safe voyage and return, instead of having to fear that they would be robbed and murdered as soon as the ship was out of sight of land. A few affluent travellers were inquisitive enough to want to journey and then to write about their travels amongst people on the other side of the ocean. It was quickly realised that Brazil was the centre of the Portuguese speaking world, being far richer and stronger and more culturally developed and artistically active than Portugal itself, let alone the savages of Africa.

Governments and their spies began to take an interest. Brazilian ships began to visit Portugal and other European countries, somewhat to the chagrin of the Portuguese traders who felt a monopoly slipping away from them. Brazilian agents were eager to obtain German machinery and engineering products. The German government refused to sell them munitions more advanced than muskets, and made it clear to the other European governments that they were expected to follow the same policy. German and Brazilian businessmen began to consider projects such as investing in Brazilian plantations and mines, reviving railways and building steam ships. Trade across the Atlantic grew and became of interest to those on both sides of the ocean. The English, French, Spanish and Dutch remembered their historical connections with the Caribbean and began to consider seizing some of those islands again to put the blacks there back to work in growing sugar and other tropical produce. It was recalled that France had once been willing to let the English keep Canada in exchange for the return of the small sugar producing island of Guadeloupe, and people quipped that considering the current state of Canada, (which had long since been crushed out of existence by the weight of snow and the tyranny of distance in this post-oil world,) they had got the better end of the bargain. They also began to visit Brazil and attempt coastal trade in their manufactures which were somewhat better than those of Portugal and Brazil.

It was the Portuguese who brought rumours to Europe of the cannibal Mexicans and their attacks on the Caribbean and the South American coastland. They also brought news of the first great disaster in this war, the capture, sack and carrying away for sacrifice and consumption of the inhabitants of the old city of Cartagena. The news, which was of mild concern in Europe because of the developing economic links, caused scandal and uproar throughout Brazil. No one knew how it had happened, but rumours soon spread that the city had been betrayed, or that the Mexicans had infiltrated it and bribed some of the garrison, or that they had found a weak spot or gate left unguarded by laziness or inefficiency or corruption. The war was not going well for the Brazilians. They were on the defensive, dispersed across a vast region, unable to concentrate against a much more mobile enemy who could attack anywhere, and incapable of mounting a strong invasion of Mexico to destroy the source of their problem. Although they tried to create and deploy a navy of small craft, drawn from their fishermen and coastal traders, these ships were seldom in the right place at the right time and in sufficient strength to defeat the raiders. This did create opportunities for European traders to winkle their way into the coastal trade and sell their goods to people who could no longer obtain local products, even though some of these ships and sailors were seized and press-ganged into the Brazilian navy. The Mexican raiders had established temporary and permanent bases and hideouts on the Caribbean islands, and started to do the same on the coastlands of South America, so clearing them out was a task which would have taxed Pompey.

That was just the start of the problem for the Brazilians. It was made much worse by their military, political and social weaknesses. Their state, although large was not very strong. Loyalty to the state was undercut by virtually feudal loyalty to noble families and by the jealousies between them. Army units were more likely to obey the family interests of their officers (who would all be drawn from families supporting that of the commander of each unit) than the orders of ministers or of the President, who were regarded as successful players of the political game on behalf of their own families and interests. They were not well trained for war or accustomed to service in the field, since they had lacked a local enemy and were used mainly for riot suppression, brief coups and as counters in assessment of the relative power of influential families. Consequently there was much bitter bickering after each failure or defeat, buck-passing, name-calling and refusal to co-operate and even suspicion of treachery. This suspicion was not always unjustified. Some families found that the best way for them to preserve their estates and their lives was to co-operate with the raiders. Others formed gangs to pillage their neighbors, make them prisoners and sell them to the Mexicans. Some officers and officials accepted bribes to turn a blind eye to the activities of the Mexicans. Peace, prosperity and the possibility of civilised living fled the region. The disorder spread down the social scale. Many of the poor decided that they had no objection to eating those that were richer than themselves, or even each other, or to helping the Mexicans to do so, particularly if they personally stood to benefit thereby. Some imitated the Mexicans when they could and professed to be converts to their religion of blood. As chaos and disorder spread across the north of the country some people just formed gangs to fight off everyone else in the desire to be left alone.

Some of the more nervous or far sighted investors began to sell their interests in Brazil and to re-invest their wealth in Portugal. German investors began to re-consider the prospects of Brazil and made their unease known to the German government. This latter refused Brazilian requests for military support. They had no desire to mount a major expedition across the Atlantic and Caribbean, and thought it would probably have been futile in any case. The most they would offer was a small training and advisory mission, although they had no expectation of converting the local soldiery to German attitudes and standards. It might help to prop up the defence of the main towns, and it would ease the political pressure from German investors. They were sure that the Brazilians and the Mexicans needed no training and not much encouragement to inspire them to cut each other's throats, and were quite welcome to do so. They would, however, offer the assistance of some warships, no longer so urgently needed in the Mediterranean, and encouraged their allies and associates to do likewise.

This contributed to the interest felt in other European countries in safeguarding their access to tropical produce and obtaining their own sources of supply. This was a trade in luxuries, paid for largely with wine, whiskey, brandy or whatever mainly alcoholic luxuries they themselves made. It had been simpler to buy from the Brazilians, but as their future became more uncertain, and their present production less reliable, thoughts turned to the alternative of growing Europe's own supplies on small islands which it was hoped would be easier to defend from raids by the Mexican cannibals. The Portuguese resumed their much earlier control of the Atlantic islands, and their experience, together with some Brazilian assistance would help to get plantations going again in the Windward and Leeward Islands. Geography was helpful. These islands were furthest from Mexico, against the prevailing winds for much of the year, which correspondingly assisted communication with Europe and created a back-stop which was a natural limit to the Mexican raids.

Over several decades Brazil slowly stabilised. Most of the north had been abandoned to cannibals, outlaws, forest and disease. The plantation economy of the north east had been severely disrupted by uprisings and attacks, flight to the forest and cannibal raids. New religious sects had arisen amongst the poor and these added to the craziness. Some of them believed that their children were witches, casting evil spells and causing all their problems. This led to child abuse and population decline. Yet the country had not been overwhelmed. The German military advisers had improved the quality and the discipline of the infantry garrisons of the main towns, so they were able to suppress unrest and fend off assaults.The ruling class was more united and determined to resist further incursions, and the bulk of the population was behind them, fearing victory by the cannibals.The Brazilian cavalry was effective in chasing down raiders, especially when they were burdened by captives and loot. European countries had successfully re-colonised many of the smaller Caribbean islands, where their plantations were thriving, supplying most of their countries needs for tropical produce.Their small naval forces and militia were alert and effective in limiting cannibal raids. They co-operated with the Brazilians on counter-raiding the coastlands and islands and made it difficult for the Mexicans to maintain themselves there after they had eaten the local inhabitants. Some of the less scrupulous Portuguese and Brazilian merchants and seamen had the bright idea of buying blacks on the African coast and selling them to the cannibals, or 'blackbirding' them directly from Brazil, but this did not prove a very profitable trade because they had to pass through areas patrolled by the European naval forces, which were more resistant to bribery than the Brazilians, reluctant to see the Mexicans strengthened, and keen to obtain the prize money awarded for capturing these ships.

Pressure from the Mexicans eased as their raids became less profitable and encountered stronger resistance. Indeed, whilst still ferocious and aggressive, the Mexicans were becoming weaker and subject to internal divisions. The Americans had pushed them far away from their settlements behind a broad cordon sanitaire of worthless deserts and mountains. Many Mexicans had gone south to repopulate Central America and even to establish towns in towns in what had been the north of Brazil, Bermuda, Cuba, Haiti and San Domingo. This gave their enemies targets to attack once they had discovered them. Their raids were just as bloody as the Mexicans's, but better organised. No prisoners were eaten. No prisoners were taken. The Brazilians and the Europeans gradually established naval dominance. They raided the coast of Mexico and drove the Mexicans inland. It was agreed between them that the mainland of South America belonged to Brazil, the islands would belong to the European countries and the Brazilians would help to conquer them. Central America and Mexico itself were tacitly accepted as being up for grabs.It was such a coastal raid that encountered the Americans who had gradually expanded around the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

No one in Europe (or Brazil) had wanted to re-discover the Americans. The old Americans had left the most appalling historical reputation. They were thought to have been the most evil and degenerate people ever to have existed and to have spread their evil around the world by force and fraud (that Machiavellian pair). It was rumoured that one of their last Presidents had been an imported monkey, wafted illegally and umconstitutionally into the Presidency by skullduggery and chicanery (that well known firm of Washington lawyers and lobbyists), secretly a convert to Islam who had promoted Islam within America, allowing them to kill Americans and destroy buildings in American cities, whilst sending his troops to harass and torture Moslems abroad. Any craziness was believable of the Americans. Most assumed that the Americans had further degenerated into the Mexicans, and no one wanted to encourage them.

Of course the actual Americans were nothing like so bad as they had been painted. In fact they were surprizingly puritanical. They also maintained a level of Classical education and culture which was now rare in Europe, and completely alien to the current state of the lands where it had originated. They had established or re-established a traditional conservative European society which they fiercely defended from internal and external infiltration, subversion or assault. They were almost Germanically diligent and well organised, and had retained or re-developed a level of technology comparable to the Germans'. They were suspicious of foreigners, haughty, unwelcoming to Europeans interfering in what they still thought of as their hemisphere of the globe. Their fanatical Republicanism made them hostile to the Imperial pretensions of German dominated Europe, although both derived from Roman models.

The finer points of cultural comparison were not explored by those who first came into contact. These were, for both parties, far from the most cultivated or diplomatic members of their respective societies, although they were amongst the most effective in practical dealings with foreigners. The fact that these strangers were well armed and delivered oaths and imprecations in strangely accented English was all the anthropological study that was needed to determine their character and identity.

The second Portuguese age of discovery was neither so extensive nor so intensive as the first had been. The little wooden sailing ships, so like their predecessors, did not go around the globe. They did not go to India, to China, to Japan, to the spice islands. They did not establish fortresses at key points and forcibly take over the commerce of the Indies. There was no need. Arab and Indian traders happily delivered spices and other goods to Basra, where they were trans-shipped to the German railway and steam boat system which efficiently delivered them throughout Europe and the Middle East. Local traders likewise delivered silk, spices and less exotic oriental products to the ports of China, and thence across the railways through China, Russia and Germany.Some Portuguese or Brazilian ships may have rounded the Cape of Good Hope to explore up the eastern coast of Africa, but this was a virtually futile project. Yes, they could re-discover the Portuguese speaking blacks of what had been Mozambique,but those that survived were in squalid circumstances and had nothing to trade, and it was not even worthwhile to enslave them. They could sail to Zanzibar and Pemba in search of cargoes of cloves, but it was no cheaper to do so than to buy them in Lisbon after they had been transported via Basra.

Tenuous as it was, however, the Portuguese connection had been important. In diamonds it had generated the wealth and the means of financing overseas trade in other than fiat currencies, unacceptable beyond their spheres of influence.This enabled a renewed connection between Europe and South America, and the revival of European trade in and production of tropical produce.This interest and correlative military and naval involvement, may just have been enough to have tipped the scales in favour of the survival of Brazil when under attack by the Mexican cannibals. Those were worthwhile, even if unintended, achievements.

By the early years of the fourth millenium, things looked rather different than they had a millenium earlier, and had recovered from the catastrophes that had been inflicted in the early centuries of the third millenium.The Americans no longer dominated the world. Those Americans that survived had renewed the sources of their culture and their social identity and cohesion. They were reluctant to have anything to do with the rest of the world. They were determined, and well able, to protect themselves, and to make use of the resources and opportunities of their continent, or even 'their' hemisphere, but they no longer felt compelled or even inclined to mind other peoples business for them.They could grow or mine all they wanted within their own domains, and had no desire to impose 'democracy' on the world. The Chinese had failed to take over from the Americans as the world straddling Colossus, and they likewise were content to mind their own neo-Confucian business, although less isolated than the Americans from the rest of the world.Russia was still extensive, but less populous and influential than it had been as its oil and natural gas had been depleted.It had saved civilisation by defending Germany and itself from the Israeli missiles, and had then pushed Islam out of it's territory and exhausted itself in helping the Germans to defeat the Turks. It deserved a rest.India was still there, behind the Himalayas, but not the global power that it had expected to become. Brazil we have heard of, and South Africa had long since dissolved into savagery. The BRICS had not been the stuff of long-lasting global architecture. Germany was now the world's strongest power, thrust into prominence by the Israeli destruction of the main cities of Western Europe and the eastern United States, and the subsequent Islamic onslaught.It's revived Empire did not bother to impose itself on the rest of the world. It was the unquenchable valour and superb organisation of its military forces, along with economic and technical superiority and diplomatic adroitness which enabled the renewed Holy Roman Empire of the German People to protect the rest of Europe, and in concert with a revived Russian empire, to halt and reverse the Islamic flood. It had liberated Europe, North Africa and the Middle East from the curse of Islam, and enabled a revival of civilisation in those long oppressed regions. Best of all, Leftism, the great source of disaster for civilised people, had been completely eliminated, burnt out by the great fires of reality. The peoples that it had preyed upon were now cured of this insidious mental disease, all it's carriers were dead, and each culture had safeguards in place against any recrudescence. No doubt evil would again be influential, but it could be expected to take a different form.

Condor's View

Condor's View

'Turning and turning in a widening gyre', the condor disregards humanity entire. Rocks aplenty, snow to spare, light that lambent chilled the air. No straight lines or unnatural masses of a single colour, which usually betokened human activity. It would have been much the same all along the spine of South America. Along the Pacific coast some signs remained, small towns and villages tenuously linked by dirt tracks, very little traveled beyond the adjacent farm plots. Even at sea the small boats did not venture often beyond the fishing grounds.It was peaceful. It was serene. It was dull. Such humans as existed were at one with nature in their simple lives and early deaths. Where nature had not provided a predator to sharpen their wits with fear, they preyed upon each other, although in a desultory way. Occasionally the snow of the peaks might be seen to have been stained by the blood of human sacrifices to appease the spirits of the heights and seek the favour of their fierily irascible natures, which rather than venting their wrath as flaming lava, shaking earth and sullen smoke, might be induced to grant the favour of access to veins of metal and other gifts of heaven and earth.Still more rarely might be found a lonely mystic communing silently with the spirits of sky and mountain, uninterested in gifts of wealth and social status, but seeking to soar in condor form above the concerns of men, yet able to cast a wide ranging eye over the scene
of their activities, passing in spirit over the awesome expanses of sky, ocean and land.

There was no sign of any great state or empire, nor even of organisation beyond a few villages, no sign of commerce or industry beyond the crudest local level, no sign of large scale building or warfare. There was altogether little sign of culture, of arts or sciences or manners beyond the possession and manufacture of some bronze implements, axes, breastplates, mirrors, ornaments, made from the copper still found in what had been Chile and the tin from what had been Bolivia. These, decorated with feathers from jungle birds traded over the mountains and supplemented by pottery and colourful cloth and a little carpentry, joinery and very occasional masonry would have appeared no more than mediocre achievements set alongside any other bronze-age culture. Nor were they distinguished by spectacular or profound mental achievements of myth, religion, astronomy, mathematics or folk-tales. No great kings or warrior chiefs, no merchant princes, no philosophers, no prophets or priests of mighty temples, no great poets, no writers, no thinkers, no sculptors or painters. Nothing to raise them to be worthy of notice, except an inordinate awe of witches and shamans and a great fear that their neighbors were all highly skilled
practitioners of evil, each directed against other.

Had our suppositous condor's gaze drifted eastwards across the continent, what would it have seen? Across it's greatest width sprawled the Amazon basin, a reinvigorated Green Hell of disease ridden swamp and jungle whose heat and humidity was only bearable by a thin population of renewed bands of savages, even more primitive than those of the Pacific coast and mountains. These were an admixture of the original Amerindians and the detritus of the decaying civilisation which had encroached upon them, Darwinian survivors in this world of decay. To its south lay the great and almost empty plains of the pampas. No burning tigers illuminated the nights of these forests either, although the shamans ensured that the villagers were greatly in awe of jaguar and snake spirits.

The collapse of the United States and of Europe so long ago, brutally struck down by the nuclear club of their supposed ally; and the continued depletion of oil, fossil fuels and mineral resources had killed the market for beef which had driven the expansion of ranching into the territory of the Amazon. Now, so many centuries later - seven, eight, nine - ( who was counting?), the jungle had reclaimed it's own and pustulated as violently and vigorously as it ever had, filled with as much disease, distress, venom, vermin, exhaustion, death and despair for all who had no place there, as could be experienced let alone imagined. Now ranching to supply local needs and the shrunken cities of the east coast had retreated to more favourable areas.

Civilisation of a semi-modern sort had likewise ebbed to the Atlantic and Caribbean coast where it had begun.Here the old cities remained, focus of the farmland, mines, plantations and industry not very far away. It was spread out along the coastline, linked by small ships as much as by road. Brazil had retained the most populous economy and strongest state. It had gradually subsumed its smaller neighbors along the Caribbean and Atlantic coasts under its hegemony.This had in part been achieved by marital and economic and political alliances between the prominent families who owned most of the property and claimed the right to occupy public office and to raise and lead military forces. These previously independent countries had lapsed into a series of provinces consisting of jungle outposts with somnolent garrisons,linked by river and sea,receiving occasional orders and officials from the
capital, Rio de Janeiro. The one-time capital Brasilia, had long since been abandoned to the jungle from which it had been pretentiously and pointlessly hacked.The leading landowners, merchants and industrialists of each region ran things more or less as they liked through the agency of their own gangs of toughs, mediating their disputes through provincial assemblies, backed they hoped by the local military commanders in the rare event of local uprisings of peasants or trouble from the savages of the interior, offering fulsome praise and promises reinforced by bribes to El Presidente and his officials far away in Rio.

Effectively this was an empire, which might as well have been called the Empire of Brazil, although nominally it remained a Republic, because the noble families were too jealous of each other to allow any one of them to assume the regnal let alone the imperial dignity. Pettifogging lawyers and historians might even suggest that it was a collection of allied republics, since they had not all been formally annexed by Brazil, but that would merely have been an antiquarian quibble. Nobility, or at least gentility, was fairly easily obtained or attained. It was a matter of social and legal acceptance or recognition. A bombastic legal petition accepted by the provincial assembly, which naturally consisted of gentlemen and nobles, was the formal route. Usually these petitions were stuffed with dubious genealogy and doubtful histories of worthy achievements to justify recognition of a fanciful coat of arms, carefully checked against the central records of the College of Heralds in Rio to ensure that it was different from all the others. Higher titles were likewise self-assumed, granted by the provincial assemblies but severely limited by what a critical and jealous audience of peers would accept. The families of many of the northern barons had come to wealth and social prominence through the sale of drugs, and centuries later more fastidious nobles would still call them Knights of the Needle and sneer that their proper heraldry should be a syringe rampant on a coca leaf. Thus a king or emperor was not needed to grant titles of nobility, so the ruler could continue to be called a President, which conveniently fended off the nitpicking constitutional lawyers.

It should not be thought that the bulk of the population felt oppressed or deprived of some great benefit called Democracy or Socialism. The masses may have huddled, but they definitely were not 'yearning to breathe free'. There were no Marxist intellectuals, no blood-stained young murderers from rich families repeating the crazed mantras of their maniacal professors babbling of smashing the world and remaking it in their own image. Such bandits as existed were more honest about their motives.There were universities, but these had reverted to their proper functions of providing an 'ivory tower' environment for a small intellectual class to pursue academic concerns. There were also training facilities for the professions of medicine, priesthood and law and to staff the upper levels of bureaucracy. These people were neither numerous nor troublesome. They had lost the insolent fancy that
they should be publicly paid to subvert public morals. The collapse and disappearance of the old world had ended the plague of over-education, the proliferation of drones unable to attain or appreciate the achievements of the higher levels of intellect and spirit, and unfitted for anything useful, yet arrogantly and adamantly certain of entitlement to an upper-middle class life with a duty to impose damaging nonsense on the people around them. There were no more 'Lefties' and no one missed them.

On paper, or depicted on a map, although there were few enough of those any more, this was a huge domain, the mighty empire of a whole continent. The reality was far smaller and more ramshackle, although still impressively extensive. The President, for what he hoped would be a long life, could regard himself as the monarch of all he surveyed, provided his survey was sweeping rather than exacting. It would be folly to expect anything so unrealistic as honesty or efficiency from his subordinates, insanity to issue orders which would or could not be obeyed or which might inflame the irritable pride and murderous jealousy of his tin-pot nobles, courtiers and generals. Each of these worthies was equipped with a long roll of sonorous names and titles attesting to immense family pride, ancient claims, rivalries and well rehearsed grievances, their ruthless ambition stoked by less fortunate relatives who all expected to profit from the further advancement of the family member currently best positioned to achieve his and their desires. Not surprisingly, tenancy of the Presidential palace was often short and terminated unexpectedly. A prudent president affected to believe the flattery and lies poured into his ears, maintained a lot of spies and informers who sometimes told the truth, and enjoyed the perquisites of his position for as long as possible. Happily for him, his officials and their rag-tag troops armed with muskets, spears, knives or bows,(supplemented by formidable irregular cavalry) they had no reason to suspect the existence of the zealously Republican Americans, let alone the terrifyingly industrious and imperial Germans. Even more happily, the latter had no interest in them.

The problem they knew about came from their neighbors to the north, the cannibalistic Mexicans. Indeed these were their only neighbors, in the sense of an organised state, and they were not well known. There was nothing so civilised as diplomatic relations with them. They were the sort of 'relations' no one would want to acknowledge, the sort who would be the black sheep in any family of nations, whose existence constituted a blot on the family escutcheon and who would not be invited to family gatherings. In fact the only 'relation' they had was as victims of their savage attacks, which were frequently and indignantly reported to EL Presidente by the officials and leading citizens of the northern coastal regions subjected to terrifying sea raids sweeping away thousands of people for temple sacrifice and sale in the meat markets of Mexican cities. Since they did not scruple to establish temporary shrines and flay, sacrifice and eat victims before they moved on, evidence of their proclivities and intentions was readily available. Horrifying stories of these raids were related throughout the country. The Brazilians did not have an aggressive naval tradition and numerous flotillas of fast moving small ships, which is what they would have needed to intercept the raiding craft and to find and destroy their bases, so they remained invitingly open to attack along a vast coastline. On land the raiders terrified the badly armed, badly trained and badly disciplined local infantry, who would not face the raiders unless behind stout defences. The cavalry was willing and able to inflict casualties on them, but they were not able to cover every point or respond with sufficient alacrity, so they mostly defended the estates of influential landowners, if they were near the main towns. Thus far the major towns in the north, those defended by large garrisons, were safe, but the countryside was being picked bare and the life of the Caribbean coastlands was being seriously disrupted. In reality there was little but their own ignorance, and the current profitability of shorter raids to stop the Mexicans from extending their raids down the Atlantic coast, and perhaps even burning El Presidente's own palace around his ears. This did not reflect well on El Presidente, who began to feel a coup coming on, and who made sure that his governors and garrison commanders knew that it did not reflect well on them or their prospects.

The Brazilians did not know it, but the increasing scale and intensity of the attacks on them was the result of the successful American defence against similar raids. Most of those who raided the Americans died, and the Americans exacted revenge by seizing more Mexican territory and property, killing or expelling the inhabitants, and making very clear that further raids would result in still greater losses. Pressure shifted to the less well armed and organised peoples of Central America, the islands of the Caribbean, and then to the mainland of South America. There was no organised invasion or plan to conquer Brazil, just the initiative of the leaders of many war bands and hunters of sacrificial victims who would extend and expand their raids until they reached some natural limit, ran out of victims, or
were repeatedly and decisively defeated by superior forces. It was not clear whether Brazil would prove to be a superior force.

Not everyone was sympathetic to the plight of the North. El Presidente had been present at a gathering of some of the 'best people' where it had been jested that the needle-knights of the north were simply meeting and getting to know their cousins, the flayers and cannibals of a little further north.This gibe contained enough truth, racially and morally, to be mildly amusing. El Presidente however had been chilled by an implication. 'What if they actually joined their no-longer-so-distant cousins? What if they went over to them and helped them to destroy the rest of the country?' Even more ghastly thoughts came to him,'What if, instead of eating the savages of the interior and even those semi-domesticated savages of the great plantations and city slums, the Mexicans recruited them or converted them to their even more savage religion?' 'What if the Mexicans, tiring of long voyages, simply settled in Brazil and ate their way south?'

Glancing around he saw that these were the men who belonged to the longest established and most noble and civilised families, who controlled the greatest estates and the best cavalry units. They would not throw in their lot with savages, but some very disturbing possibilities had arisen. His Excellency became silent and preoccupied.He left the gathering sooner than expected. Speculation and gossip spread in his absence. 'Was he ill?' 'Had he been poisoned?' 'Did he know of some new disaster?' 'Was there a plot afoot?' 'How may I best secure my own position and that of my family in the event of a coup?' Before that evening there had been no coup plot, after it people were looking to join one.

Where men had stood, soon there would be more carrion for condors and other scavengers to devour.

After the Caliphate

After the Caliphate

They had not easily been overcome. The struggle was harsh, but the fanatical hordes of Islam had been over-matched by the strength, courage and skill of the Imperial German troops and their incomparable, and it seemed- unconquerable - organisation, leadership and technology. The Moslems had sought death unflinchingly, and they had found it; sent to Allah by the bullets, bombs and bayonets of the best army in the world.

After driving Islam out of Europe, and overcoming the Turks with the aid of the Russians, the Germans and their allies or auxiliaries from the shrunken successor states of western Europe, had established a firm grasp on Antioch and it's environs, that strategic region which had seen victories of Alexander and Bohemund, and many before and since. Not trusting the Turks to remain defeated and quiescent, they had strongly fortified themselves there and dared the Moslems of the Middle East to break their teeth upon this iron stronghold at the entrance to the Levant. All the time, of course, they were strengthening their grip on the supply route by land and sea leading from the recently liberated Constantinople, and back by sea, river,rail and road, through the Balkans to Germany itself. Held in a vise between the threats of the Russians to their north and east, and the Germans to their west and south, the exhausted Turks had been compelled to remain still. However fervently the more resentful and religious wished to intervene in response to their own inclinations and the inflaming appeals from the Caliph in Jerusalem; they were unable to do more than wriggle feebly and make a few unofficial ghazi raids with low level piracies and spying against the hated infidels. Slowly the Europeans cleared the pirates from the Aegean and Cilician coasts and the islands of Crete and Cyprus and took firm control of the adjacent seas, reducing the Islamic threat in this theatre to merely nuisance value.The Moslems lacked the timber and the iron, and much of the technical skill and determination that would have been needed to float a fleet strong enough to wrest naval dominance from the Europeans. After several years of fighting around Antioch, it was clear that the Moslems could not re-capture it, and it appeared that the Germans were unable or unwilling to give the blood and treasure that would be required for a major assault into Syria aimed at the capture of Jerusalem. Their men, however, were receiving battle training which kept the German war machine alert and efficient at relatively low cost.

Whilst the attention of the Caliphate was fixed on the immediate German threat in the Levant, the allies or auxiliaries of the Germans became active in the Mediterranean and the Maghreb. The Men of Wessex, jealous of the mineral resources of the Yorkshiremen, and even of the Mercians, had scraped together a fleet and army and had seized the iron mines of southern Morocco and it's thinly settled coast, to give themselves the basis for a metal working industry that they hoped would be comparable with that of their neighbors and rivals. The Germans had approved this initiative as it gained an important resource from the Moslems, kept the Wessexmen keen on continuing the fight, and encouraged their other European partners to try their own luck at despoiling the Moslems. They had coaxed the Mercians and Yorkshiremen into selling coal to Wessex to promote it's industrial growth.This had resulted in a revamping of the old decayed system of canals and river transport
throughout England.

The Moroccans had not been able to make any vigorous response, not least because they feared falling victim to the renewed aggression of the Spaniards and the French, who had themselves started to seize the coastal towns of north Africa, partly in response to Moslem piracy, and partly in hopes of gaining some useful territory, and partly from a desire not to be completely outdone by their neighbors in fighting the Moslems. Biter complaints to Allah and to his Caliph had elicited no helpful response, so the small number of invaders, supported by the Germans, had slowly taken over the coast and organised estates to grow crops for export to Europe. There was a severe limit to the quantity of olive oil and wine from the Mediterranean that could be profitably sold in the markets of Europe - and North Africa produced little else that could be profitably sold in the markets of Europe. Hence the area relapsed into it's usual torpor with the coastal towns and farmlands under the control of new masters, as had happened before. The desert tribes continued their migrations and squabbling and occasional raiding of the settled areas, eliciting the predictable and predictably ineffective punitive counter raids, so that everything continued as it always had.

The Germans were interested in controlling the Mediterranean passage between Sicily and Tunisia, so they ensured that there was a reasonable garrison and a naval force based in Tunisia. Some Imperial bureaucrat with a sense of history and a liking for pretty maps, had designated the North African littoral from Morocco to Tunisia, 'Vandalia'. He had given it a governor and council which co-ordinated the relations between the French, Spanish, English, Portuguese, Dutch and Danish owners and occupiers of it's towns and estates, with a military commander to ensure that their forces worked together.

The big surprise, particularly for the Moslems, came when the German attack arrived, not via Antioch and through the Levant as everyone had expected, but directly across the sea; to fall upon an Egypt that was not well prepared to receive it. Of course, it had been impossible to conceal the preparations for such a large attack, but the Moslem commanders had expected the Germans to attack through Antioch, possibly with diversionary attacks on Libya by the other Europeans, so the defences of Egypt had been weakened. Counter attacking the Germans, in prepared positions, across the Sinai desert, once they had secured the main points in Egypt, and had left their 'partners' who had bypassed Libya by sea, to clean up remaining resistance, had been another losing proposition for the forces of the Caliph when they arrived from the north. Allah had had a bad week before his battered forces pulled back to organise what defence they could on the other side of the desert, and to respond to the raids from the re-invigorated Imperial forces around Antioch who had taken the opportunity to make gains into northern Syria and to probe along the coast towards Lebanon. There was wailing and gnashing of teeth in Jerusalem, but no compensation for the irrecoverable losses of manpower, territory and prestige.

Command of the sea had then enabled the Europeans to by-pass the Sinai desert and land substantial forces along the coast of Palestine, as well as to introduce long distance raiders and reconnaissance teams, supported by the German airships.Co-ordinated defence efforts collapsed and soon the whole coastline was liberated, although fierce Moslem resistance continued in fortified areas and towns.Many such points of resistance had to be reduced to rubble by German artillery and the final defenders killed in hand to hand combat.The end had come when, unable to defend Jerusalem any longer, the Caliph and his entourage had died in a suicidal attack against the German forces. Although mopping up continued for some time, this series of unparalleled disasters for the cause of Islam had broken the morale of the remaining Moslem forces which had no further powerful Moslem state to support. It caused many to question the foundations of their belief. A final German psychological victory, just before the death of the Caliph and the liberation of Jerusalem, had been achieved by a daring raid on Mecca. An airship had quietly carried a company of assault troops down the Red Sea and over the desert.In the middle of a sleepy night they had silently descended unobserved into the centre of Mecca, removed the already broken holy meteorite from its corner of the Kaaba and departed with it's fragments which would later be displayed to the world along with photographs of the raid to prove it's authenticity, leaving explosive charges to detonate spectacularly as they flew away through the otherwise silent night.

A war god who keeps losing battles soon loses followers. Thereafter Islam became far less popular in the Middle East, although it remained strong amongst savages in Africa and in areas of southern and central Asia far from German influence.

All that was some years ago, and since then the Germans and their supporters have busily consolidated their gains. Egypt, jewel in the Mediterranean crown, has become a major producer of sub-tropical produce. There is even talk of re-building the dams on the Nile to regulate it's floods again. It's importance for the Romans lay in it's grain production to feed the voracious and parasitical city of Rome. This is no longer needed. Poland and the Ukraine can more easily supply any grain needed beyond local production. Of course the Egyptian population is much lower now, it's cities are cleaner, it is well managed and Islam is a superstition now found only amongst the lowest classes.

The Holy Land is a quaint backwater. It's surviving Moslem population was expelled to Iraq or Arabia or Jordan, and the remaining population subsists on basic agriculture and the tourist or pilgrim trade to mainly Christian religious sites. Of course, it's not at peace. The wrangles between the various Christian sects have replaced the Moslem disputes, albeit they have been more a matter of words than of blood, thus far. Unfortunately these wrangles are replicated in the disputes amongst the governing council, which includes Russian and French as well as German representatives, reflecting the enormous prestige of the Holy Land and it's history of religious disputes and of foreign interference. Organisation and policing of the pilgrim routes and facilities is in the hands of a revived Templar Order, headquartered again in what was the Al-Aqsa Mosque, although this is no longer believed to have been Solomon's Temple. The tour groups are brought mostly by German and Russian ship owners or operators.It's a long way and quite expensive. The route from the south of France is less safe because of piracy by Italian, Greek, Corsican, Sardinian and Sicilian gangs, as there is less protection than on the military route from Constantinople. There was far too much disagreement amongst the religious sects for Jerusalem to be made a Patriarchate, as Constantinople had been, and there was no agreement on who should be king of a proposed new Kingdom of Jerusalem, so the area remains under a Council for the Holy Land, representing various sects and their foreign backers, and depending ultimately on German arms and goodwill.Sectarians of apocalyptic disposition ponder the recent German successes and compare them confusedly with their expectations of a climatic battle of Armageddon, not sure what to make of recent history and it's potential relation to their favourite Biblical prophecies, and only serving to confuse each other still further by their ranting.

The rest of the Fertile Crescent is under direct German control. Following the destruction of the Caliphate, the Germans acted swiftly to gain control of Mesopotamia, sending forces as far as Basra, to secure access to the Persian Gulf and forestall any such move by the Russians. These were becoming restive at the comparison between their own passivity, distanced by rugged mountains and recovering from the terrible casualties they had suffered against Turkey, and the continuing series of spectacular German successes. This far sighted geopolitical manoeuvre has yet to bear fruit as the Germans have shown no interest in extending their influence through the Persian Gulf into the Indian Ocean. They have been content to receive a small amount of trade via Arab or Persian intermediaries. Perhaps this trade will grow as the spices brought from India or the Indies by Arab sailors, and commonly used in middle eastern cooking, may start to become popular in Europe once again.

Much has been achieved, and more may follow. Europe and the Mediterranean and the Middle East have been freed from the plague and curse of Islam, their people free to follow milder and less violent superstitions. Germany stands supreme, a colossus bestriding three continents; a benign colossus, encouraging and keeping peace amongst the pygmies of the rest of Europe, whilst busily extending it's population and influence in southeastern Europe, making it an enlargement of Germany itself. This organisation, colonisation and prosperity is being extended to the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts that had been occupied by the Turks, and to the uplands of Syria that had seen the Crusader states and before them the cities of the Seleucid successors of Alexander.

It had been proposed to revive Ionia, but it was immediately obvious that the remaining 'Greeks' were no longer sufficiently 'Ionian' to be able to supply enough suitable settlers. Hence, most of the remaining Turkish inhabitants were simply deported to the Anatolian plateau, and the coastlands garrisoned and slowly settled by Europeans, to protect the route to the Middle East and to strengthen the fetters binding Turkey to prevent it from again intervening against the interests of Europe and civilisation.

Not altogether co-incidentally the ruins of the great Seleucid city and military base of Apamea, not very far from Antioch, and where the great Seleucid military parades had been held, has become a favoured tourist site, and there are important modern military bases in its vicinity. Many senior officers and officials and businessmen have holiday villas in the area, to enjoy the climate and the company and use the area as a base for sight seeing throughout the Middle East. There is now a comfortable commercial airship service linking Berlin, Vienna, Belgrade, Constantinople, Troy, Ephesus, Pergamon, Antioch, Apamea, Baghdad and Basra. From Antioch a branch goes to Jerusalem and Alexandria. Railways and steamships carry freight and poorer passengers over much the same routes, which are fully protected by the military. The difficulties of supply, communications, government, trade and tourism have been greatly reduced and the prosperity of many correspondingly increased.

Apart from maintaining some military and naval base, the Germans have been less interested in the western and central Mediterranean than in the east. The minor European states maintain their footholds in 'Vandalia' and ship some produce from Alexandria. The Mediterranean islanders avoid tangling with the Germans, but slyly raid others, and each other, when they can.

The Germans seem content with their achievements, able after generations of sustained struggle to rest and turn to the pursuits of peace and pleasure. They do not want to conquer the world. They do not even want to extirpate Islam. They are willing to maintain their empire within the bounds of the deserts to the south and the mountains to the south east. They have no interest in the wretched savages living in and beyond the Sahara. They will keep an eye on the semi-independent Arabs of southern Arabia and allow some trade with them and with the Persians. The status of the latter within Islam as Shi'ite heretics has moderated their grief at the failure of the Arab orthodox Sunni Caliphate, and their reluctance to be caught between the Russians and the Germans in the same vise as constricts the Turks - also hereditary enemies to whom much territory was lost in the past - makes them cautious and polite towards the Germans and causes them to influence their followers within Imperial domains to be similarly prudent and self-effacing. The Germans seem happy to remain in Middle Earth, between the physical and spiritual extremes of Ice and Fire, rejecting the temptations of Eastern ecstasies and indifferent to their western equivalent.

For the moment the Imperial war machine rests, and begins to rust. It's soldiers stand at the furthest limits of the old Roman Empire, behind them it's bureaucrats and businessmen busily organise peace and prosperity; before them only a small picquet of romantics, orientalist academics, mystics and travellers on 'the golden road to Samarkand', who travel physically and spiritually 'for lust of knowing what should not be known'. The rulers of the Empire, this Second Holy Roman Empire of the German People, this western head of the revived Double Eagle would not put it in such terms, but they have lifted their faces to the dawn gleaming on the snowy peaks of the Zagros Mountains and rejected the lure of following the Macedonian and the Dionysian rout over them to Ecbatana, Persepolis, Hyrcania, Parapamisadae and onwards to the utmost bounds of mellifluous possibility in places of mystery, horror, terror and ecstasy. For them, practical men prudently seeking security, prosperity and social success, in charge of the humble destinies of common men seeking just these things,- although inhabitants of such a romantic enterprise as an Empire, and such a wildly romantically named Empire,- it is as if they sit as merchants ruling an emporium, and forget Imperium. In their hearts, and as men bearing serious worldly responsibilities for others and not free to wander as poor pilgrims seeking salvation, the call of Apollo from Delphi rings louder; 'Know Thyself','Nothing in Excess'.