Instant recap: Marcus told his spiritual master, Acarya Vasudeva, that the federal government was going to move against him, and that there was no way to head it off. Vasudeva advised him that his Dharma was to die as a warrior.
10. Betrayal, Revenge
Marcus selected a building in the most isolated stretch of acreage in the Cascadian colony, a plateau surrounded by rugged forested terrain. Working under large camouflage nets, he and his team began arming the combat helicopters and setting up antiaircraft guns, as well as some missile launchers. Using a “mole”, a heavy-duty boring machine, they carved a tunnel from the basement of the building to a cliffside niche they judged least likely to be spotted by invading forces; there was a footpath leading down to a shelter in the woods. This was the planned escape route for fighters to make a last-minute exit.
Marcus asked for volunteers who would stay with him and fight to the death in the building, which was dubbed the Alamo. Hundreds of men and even a few women eagerly vied for the honor, including Eric and Victor. But Marcus selected only a few of the most hardcore Kriegers, as he called them, and no one whose life and mission were adjudged to be vital to the future of the sodality. To Eric he said, “I wasn’t able to transmit enough of my spiritual gifts to qualify you to take up the task of an Avatar, but you sure inherited all of my yang and kickass grits, and you have enough level-headed insight to make you a leader. So after I’m gone you’ll probably end up as the Führer.”
Victor, meanwhile, had to finish writing his biography of Marcus. Saxon desperately wished to die with her soulmate, but she was pregnant with a child conceived in the last Summer Solstice festival. They agreed that she, along with Eric and Victor, would be in the troupe of fighters at the Alamo who would bale out through the tunnel when the situation became hopeless.
Marcus had his own double agents inside the government security agencies, and they confirmed that the movement of the heavy weaponry to the USA had been detected, and that reprisal was being debated in the highest circles of power. Everyone in the community was on tenterhooks expecting the invasion at any moment, but time went by and no move was made against them. In their next report Marcus’ operatives explained the reason for the delay: the government did not want it to become known that a rogue entity within its borders had become such a well-armed force, for this would be an embarrassment at the least, and a possible incitement to imitators. Furthermore, the Ophidians ~ the Jews within the ruling clique ~ wanted to suppress the scoop that a white nationalist organization had grown to such size and influence. The only formal charge that could be made against the Solarian Sodality was its possession of the illegal weapons, and this was the stumbling block. If another pretext could be found to arrest Marcus and shut down his colonies, the Feds would quickly swoop in.
The usual procedure for acquiring, or concocting, such evidence was to infiltrate groups with informers. Despite many efforts over the years, however, the federal agencies never managed to plant a snitch in Marcus’ group, because it was infused with the Geist, a psychic-spiritual nimbus amenable only to those who shared the bond of true communion. The presence of anyone not of the Geist would have stood out as plainly as a black person in a white crowd ~ or as Marcus sometimes phrased it, a snake crawling around in a flock of doves. Likewise, even though a fair number of people had dropped out of the sodality for various reasons, none of them ever succumbed to federal blandishments that would bring harm to their former kindred. Unfortunately, an exception occurred at the fatal moment.
Venus had an old friend named Sarah whom she knew from the San Francisco sex club in the ’60s. The benefits of working there faded with her youth, and in 1980 she became a full-time member of the sodality. Her white identity blossomed and she seemed perfectly at home. Her talents as a Shakti well-versed in the erotic arts were a valuable contribution to the community. She became a mentor to many young Shaktis before and after their ritual deflorations, and was profuse in her admiration for the ground-breaking praxis of erotic dharma that was being developed in the sodality under Marcus’ visionary guidance, as described in chapter 6. She regretted that it was deemed illegal, and often condemned the warped system of justice in the mainstream gynocracy.
Then Sarah moved to Ramarland, and found unexpected challenges in the primal habitat, which later was called the Patrix. It was a unique experiment in which sophisticated postmodern people had taken up a lifestyle straight out of the Stone Age, including the possibility that hostile forces could break in from the perimeter at any moment and wage bloody conflict. The fact that most of the men were Kriegers, warriors who had engaged in mortal combat, created a supercharged erotic nimbus which reverbed off the women, who wore abbreviated clothing suited to the climate. Thus it was a major challenge to keep the actual erotic relations securely within the bounds of the dharma, and a crucial task of the Shaktis was to serve as a release-valve for the unmarried men.
There was also a tendency for physical violence to spill over from the battlefield to relations among the kindred themselves. When it happened between men the resolution was a one-on-one fair fight. Between men and their wives or lovers, the solution arrived at by Marcus, the female elders, and all others concerned was to establish dharmic boundaries for it under the rubric of corporal discipline, thus empowering men to use their superior physical strength as the bottom line of dominion over their women as well as their children. Martial techniques were adapted and taught whereby the salutary lesson of pain could be administered with no actual physical harm at all. The severest form of corporal discipline ever used was a sound spanking.
In the sex club Sarah had been mainly a submissive, and this proclivity seemed to smooth the way for her transition to the culture of resurgent male dominion in the Solarian Sodality. But in Ramarland her relations with the Kriegers did not go well. Her erotic ministrations to them followed the same pattern that past lovers had found delightful, but somehow the Kriegers were offended by it. The first one slapped her and stomped out in the middle of the action. Similar incidents followed with other men.
The praxis of the sodality was that every Shakti was a member of a “harem” of an alpha male who had charge of them. Sarah’s alpha male consulted with the female elders, and they arrived at an analysis: she was a passive dominator who used her submissiveness to covertly manipulate and control her lovers. This unconscious deception went unnoticed by ordinary men, just as it usually did in the mainstream culture; but real men like the Kriegers picked it up instinctively and reacted to it with primal disdain or outrage.
Sarah was abashed at this revelation, and recognized it as true. She had thoughts of leaving the sodality, but she wanted to work it out and felt willing to change. Her alpha male attempted to penetrate to the depths of her psyche in a love-making session, but it just brought her opposition to the surface. Finally he turned her over his knee and spanked her hard. It was an outrageous shock to her system, even though she had undergone worse punishment at the sex club, often while helplessly bound. It was a psychological mechanism that her friend Venus called the fantasy flip: the precise thing that gives you the greatest sexual pleasure when it’s playacted becomes utterly intolerable when it happens in real life. The difference, of course, is that in sex play it’s essentially under your own control, even in consensual bondage. Finding herself truly under the control of another person, even though it was a man who cared for her, was subliminally experienced by Sarah as a mortal threat, which in fact was to her ego.
The fallout was that although Sarah still had deep positive feelings for her spiritual kindred in the Solarian Sodality, she realized that her continued membership would be a burden on them and create an irreconcilable psychological conflict within herself. Just as in all sodalities, whether spiritual, political, or primal, the bottom-line requirement and key to the communion was bhakti in the broadest sense: the unconditional willingness to sacrifice your personal interests for the good of the group. Many of the people in the SS, in fact a much larger proportion than in mainstream society, were highly individuated souls, but every one of them had surrendered to the Geist in their heart of hearts. And this was the core dharma of which Sarah had found herself to be incapable.
So it was that she returned to the U.S., gathered her belongings, and bid a tearful farewell to her closest kindred. She resettled in San Francisco where she had some old friends, including a couple of men who were happy to supplement her resources out of genuine affection or as gifts of lust. She was surprised one day to get a letter from a man who was one of her patrons at the club in the old days; this was Philip, who had been a lover of Venus back then and incurred the wrath of Marcus, as told in Conjunction with Venus, chapters 2 & 3. Philip had vowed revenge, and his contacts with the inner circle of power, particularly the Ophidians, told him that it was finally within his grasp twenty years later.
His letter did not give away his dark design to Sarah, but she was puzzled by the sudden interest from a man she barely knew. He said that a mutual friend mentioned that she had left “the Marcus cult”, and that he was concerned about her welfare, as well as that of another old and dear friend who was still in the “cult”, namely Venus. Philip asked if he could come for a visit, and Sarah agreed. He professed sympathy for her and expressed an ingenuous curiosity about life in Marcus’ community, which he now refrained from calling a cult. Because of their past erotic relationship it seemed natural that he was interested in that aspect of the sodality, and Sarah was drawn into giving a complete and colorful account of it, including the praxis of dharmalove by Shaktis who were legally underage.
At that point Philip dramatically switched to a self-righteous demeanor, acting morally offended. Sarah now realized what his game was, and that she had been tricked into betraying her friends. She reacted angrily and told him to leave, but he threatened to bring felony charges against her for participating in child abuse if she didn’t cooperate. In this way he browbeat her into submission, and she gave sworn testimony which provided the Feds with the legal ammunition they needed to launch their invasion of Marcus’ colonies in California and Cascadia.
The Kin of Aries 