The Demi-Monde: Summer

by Rod Rees

  The aura is the multicoloured halo, supposedly produced by the soul, which surrounds each and every living body. By the examination of these auras certain adepts – Auralists – have shown that all of HumanKind’s SAE is, to a greater or lesser extent, contaminated by cravings (notably for blood), desires (notably for sex) and emotions (notably with regard to everything else). But to the Auralists’ great disappointment, thus far they have failed to detect any individual possessed of a ‘pure’ aura. Whilst this confirmed what I have long suspected – that Demi-Mondians are a venal and vicious bunch of bastards – it also raised the question that if our SAE is contaminated, does this not also mean that the information provided by the senses and processed by the mind is similarly corrupted? If this is indeed the case, then our perception of the world about us must be fallible and inconsistent.

  This question was most ably argued by the Anglo thinker Aldous Huxley in his The Doors of misPerception, which propounded the theory that, because of their contaminated SAE, the way each Demi-Mondian perceives the world is unique and hence each individual sees ‘reality’ differently. It is a challenging idea and one which led to Huxley being purged by King Henry.

  But as always happens when someone comes up with a Really Interesting Idea, some silly sod (me, as it happens) takes things to extremes and the Interesting is stretched and mutilated until it becomes the Absurd. Taking Huxley’s arguments and extending them, I propositioned that as the purity of the SAE varies in each Demi-Mondian, it follows that each individual’s perception of Reality is similarly different and hence there is no definitive Reality. QED, Reality cannot exist.

  In my pamphlet ‘Through the Bottom of a Glass, Darkly’ – so named because the insight came to me when I was pissed – I conjectured that HumanKind’s perception of the Demi-Monde isn’t just wrong, but is a fabrication foisted upon us by a mischievous ABBA, that we live in a Shadow World or, as I prefer to call it, a Virtual World. This is the Proposition of unBelievability which I defined as follows:

  unBelievability is the contention that the Demi-Monde is not a ‘Real’ world but is an illusionary Virtual World devised by an unknown agency (okay, ABBA) and sustained by HumanKind’s Fallibility of Perception, itself a consequence of a contaminated Solidified Astral Ether, this, in turn, a consequence of HumanKind’s addiction to Blood and to Fucking.

  Anyway, WunZians, as might have been expected, got really bent outta shape about unBelievability (but then, according to WunZians, anything that TooZians proposition must be bollocks), saying there was no perceptual ambiguity that they had noticed and that with ABBA what you see (and hear and smell and touch and taste) is what you get. This led to a really nasty little confrontation with one particularly truculent WunZian (a young girl named Su Xiaoxiao, who seems preternaturally and precociously intelligent, damn her) arguing the toss with a rabidly opinionated TooZian (me again, it was a slow day).

  And you know what this sneaky bitch Su Xiaoxiao did? She provided proof that Perceived Reality coincided with Real Reality!

  Unbelievable … or I guess, more accurately, non-unBelievable.

  This clever cow went back to first principles to demonstrate the logicality and consistency of the Demi-Monde and hence its intrinsic reality. It is one of the keystones of Confusionist philosophy (accepted, remarkably, by both WunZians and TooZians) that the Kosmos is fuelled by Qi, the ineffable and undetectable energy which flows through and around all Living things. Qi is the unseen and unseeable élan vital which energises the soul and which resides in all things constituted by the Living. Qi is present in two forms – Yang and Yin – the polarity of each bundle of Qi oscillating between these active and passive states over a period of two thousand years.

  The stunt Su Xiaoxiao pulled was to measure the unmeasurable: she measured Qi!

  Of course, she had help. It was the WunZian philosopher Mozi who had the insight to appreciate that whilst Qi itself is unseen and unseeable, its effects are not. Mozi called this process of measuring Qi indirectly by gauging its impact on the Demi-Monde ‘ImMaterial Analysis’. To do this Mozi developed the Qi Scale, which by the examination of certain aspects of socio-economic activity allowed an assessment to be made of the level of Qi prevalent in the Demi-Monde. The original elements used by Mozi to calculate the level of Qi in the Demi-Monde were:

  Number of murders

  Number of political assassinations

  Number of wars involving 50,000 or more combatants

  The height of men’s hats

  The number of centimetres women’s skirts rise above the ankle

  The number of slaves per capita

  The number of profanities used in newspapers

  The average height of yarrow growing in the Hub.

  Never one to hide his light under a bushel, Mozi (being a pompous WunZian bastard) announced that the level of Qi would be measured in Mozi units. Now by the use of the Qi Scale WunZian scholars were able to show that the level of Qi in the Demi-Monde oscillates around an unchanging Base Level. I stress ‘unchanging’ because – as those WunZian wankers delighted in telling me – anything that it is in stasis with the rest of the Kosmos cannot be subject to variation because of differing individual perceptions. QED unBelievability is crap and the Demi-Monde ain’t Virtual. They even propounded the Law of Qi which states:

  Qi can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only change from the Yang to the Yin form and back again. Thus, in a closed system, such as the post-Confinement Demi-Monde, the Yin/Yang aspect of Qi will oscillate around an unchanging mean – also known as the Base Level – but its total quantity in the system will remain constant.

  So, according to those crafty WunZians, the levels of Qi (the summation of Yin and Yang Qi) present can never change. The belief that the Demi-Monde is in a permanent and unvarying state of equilibrium regarding Qi was called by Su Xiaoxiao the Doctrine of Equilibrianism. She even developed a graph demonstrating that although the total quantity of Qi is in equilibrium, the active and the passive aspects of Qi are forever in flux, with the two elements oscillating over a two-thousand-year period thus:

  As can be seen from Su Xiaoxiao’s graph overleaf, the thousand-yearlong Ages of Yin and Yang alternate, with the Demi-Monde predicted to move from the Second Age of Yang (or as it is called by the renegade HerEticals, the Age of the nonFemmes) to the Second Age of Yin (aka the Age of the Femmes) around the year 1000 AC.

  It was a persuasive argument and I must tell you, Dear Reader, that for a while I was gutted. But after much careful meditation and the consuming of several bottles of Solution I re-examined the maths and by incorporating additional elements into the Qi Scale (the amount of naked flesh displayed by women in public, the average calorific content of a Demi-Mondian’s daily food intake, their choice of smoking materials and of recreational drugs … that sort of shit) I was able to show that, rather than being in equilibrium, the quantity of Qi in the Demi-Monde has been inexorably rising over the last four thousand years. By the skilful remodelling of the factors used to calculate it, I demonstrated that Qi oscillates around an ever-increasing Base Level (a contradiction in terms, but there you go). This enabled me to postulate a Second Law of Qi.

  Graph Showing Levels of Yin and Yang Qi in the Demi-Monde and the Socio-Gender Consequences (after Confusionist Sage Wun Zi)

  When two systems are connected with each other, there will be a net exchange of Qi unless or until they come to be in Qidian equilibrium. Qi will always flow from a higher-Qi system to a lower-Qi system.

  This, of course, supposed that the Demi-Monde is not a closed system, but I was able to support this contention by reference to religion (and boy, did that piss off the WunZians!), citing that all religious types insisted that the Demi-Monde was merely one of the Nine Worlds, albeit the one which was most closely connected to the first of these worlds, the Spirit World.

  On this basis I proposed that Qi flowed from the Spirit World – which by definition has the highest level of Qi as it is the one occ
upied by ABBA – to the Demi-Monde and that it is this flow which is responsible for the ever-increasing level of Qi in the Demi-Monde.

  As is my wont, I went further, speculating that this extra Qi is inclined to destabilise the Demi-Monde and leads – inevitably – to the violence that is endemic in this world, violence being a symptom of an excess of Qi. An over-abundance of Qi hyperexcites the Living which make up Demi-Mondians’ SAE, males being especially prone to having a rampant and uncontrollable excess of Qi, or, as it is known in Femme circles, MALEvolence.

  The WunZians challenged me to show how Qi entered the Demi-Monde from the Spirit World, but this objection was easy to rebut. I merely alluded to the various places around this world – I like to call them Qi-Holes but they are more usually referred to as Portals – where Daemons effect entry into the Demi-Monde. It is through these, I countered, that Qi leaks into the Demi-Monde.

  But having proposed this Concept of Qi DisEquilibrium, I got to thinking about its consequences. Inspired by Su Xiaoxiao, I plotted my findings on the graph shown overleaf.

  The unsettling conclusion I came to was that once the amount of Qi within the Demi-Monde rises to a Critical Level (nineteen years from now in the year 1005 AC) then the world will self-destruct in an orgy of violence, an event which I named the Big Bang … or, as those of a religious bent prefer to call it, Ragnarok. A study of the religious tracts indicates that Ragnarok will signal a shift from Yin/Yang dualism to a merging of Yin and Yang, creating a harmonised Demi-Monde suffused with Ying. It will be at this moment when the Messiah – whose manifestation is foretold in all Demi-Mondian religions – will arrive to lead the faithful to ABBAsoluteness.

  Graph Showing Levels of Yin and Yang Qi in the Demi-Monde and the Socio-Gender Consequences (after Confusionist Sage Too Zi)

  Ah, religion …

  It is a somewhat unsettling realisation for a TooZian such as me to appreciate that the predictions made by exacting empirical enquiry have been foreshadowed by a bunch of bozos living a thousand years ago who had a predilection for self-denial, self-flagellation and, I suspect (the holy books are strangely silent on this subject), self-abuse. And this discomfort was further compounded by the understanding that when examining the beliefs of all the religions and cults of the Demi-Monde there emerges a disturbing commonality regarding Ragnarok, the Final Days and the other eschatological aspects of their religious mumbojumbo.

  But ever the diligent scholar, I set to examining this commonality – these synoMyths, as I prefer to call them – in the hope that they might indicate, albeit obliquely, the reason why ABBA would wish – ultimately – to destroy the Demi-Monde. Of course, I fully appreciated that myths are a product of an oral storytelling tradition and as time passes, as such stories move from generation to generation, from teacher to pupil, from language to language, from bar to bar, they undergo many mutations. However, the fact remains that when these religions are synthesised down, it is obvious they have a monogenesis, a shared origin.

  And what did I find when I completed this backward synthesis? The chill realisation that ABBA will terminate the Demi-Monde when HeShe had perfected HisHer ultimate creation, HumanKind.

  Perfection betokens the End of Days.

  All Demi-Mondian religions have at their heart the recognition that the ultimate aim of ABBA is to make HumanKind pure and perfect, free of sin and capable of being brought into the final and total communion with HimHer known as ABBAsoluteness. But they go further, stating that this achievement of Perfection will only be available to some of us (the Pure in Heart, the Believers, Those with Faith, yadda, yadda, yadda). That’s why all religions are so reward-driven: they say to their followers ‘do this’ (or, more often, ‘don’t do this’, especially when you’re naked or have the aforesaid cucumber handy) and ‘this will be your reward’. Follow the UnFunDaMentalist doctrine of Living&More and your body and mind will be purified and you will become one with ABBA; practise the unrestrained sexual hedonism preached by ImPuritanism and you will achieve JuiceSense and oneness with ABBA; follow the Way advised by WunZian Confusionists, have wu wei suffuse your soul and you will achieve ABBAsoluteness, etc. etc.

  But no matter what these religions say, they cannot disguise that there is an appalling lack of certainty about their predictions.

  My guess (and guessing is not something a TooZian readily admits to) is that whilst ABBA is driven to achieve Perfection in HumanKind, HeShe does not know the form this Perfection will take. To my mind, it is obvious that ABBA is seeking to achieve this – as in all things in Nature – by competition and by struggle … by the Survival of the Fittest. The Demi-Monde is merely a testing ground! That is why there are no synoMyths which state definitively who will emerge victorious from the contest that is the Final Days. By presenting HumanKind with so many alternative ways of governing their lives, by allowing so many conflicting religions and philosophies to flourish in the Demi-Monde, ABBA challenges HumanKind to compete and by competing to permit the best to emerge victorious.

  My studies revealed that there are just three apocalyptic synoMyths. The first of these is that the Demi-Monde has been (still is, in fact) a place of trial where all the philosophies have been pitted against one another and where HumanKind in all its many guises will be tested. The second synoMyth is that ABBA will send a Messiah from the Spirit World to lead HumanKind on the path (the Way) to Harmony/Ying/ABBAsoluteness/OneNess/Grace with HimHer.

  It is the struggle between the Messiah and the Beast that forms the basis for the Final Conflict. But the Messiah will not fight alone, having the help of PaPa Legba (sometimes called the Trickster, or the Wily Fox), the Warrior (sometimes called the Battle-Maiden or grim Surt) and, finally, the Fresh Bloom, destined by Fate and her Ancestors to come to the Messiah’s aid when all have deserted her.

  It is the third of these synoMyths that I found most intriguing – especially in the light of my own research regarding Qi. This is the rather enigmatic prediction that at the outset of Ragnarok a Column – the Column of Loci – lost since the Confinement will be recovered. It is this Column that holds the key to how the Demi-Monde might be made as one with the Spirit World … how Demi-Mondians might find Oneness with ABBA. Unfortunately, it appears that the details of this event are only contained in the Flagellum Hominum, an esoteric work which, because it is rendered in Pre-Folk, has never been read.

  Fortunately, this synoMyth is also described – albeit in a typically obtuse manner – in the fifty-second Epigram of the iChing:

  Know you, the Column is the bridge

  Between the Real and the UnReal,

  Between the Yin and the Yang.

  When the Five have been tested

  In the fire of Life

  Bring it to where it must rest.

  Then will be the merging.

  One will be blessed.

  I believe the Column is the means by which Qi within the Demi-Monde will be brought into Equilibrium with the Spirit World.