Meet the Paschats!
Your pinned post for the new section
I decided to add a new section. All about Paschats, in their various guises. With some other assorted Starseeds thrown in for good measure from time to time.
Who are Paschats, I hear you ask. Well, simply put, they are/were (depending on your opinions about time travel) a leonine lifeform from the binary star system you know as Sirius (we’ll get more specific in due course). If you want an idea of what they look like, then the images in this post should give you a good idea. That first image, by the way, which is also the image I chose for the section itself, is of the Hohlenstein-Stadel, discovered in a cave in Germany not so long ago. It is approximately 35-40 thousand years’ old, and carved from a single piece of ivory. There is nothing else like it in the archaeological record. The consensus amongst scared Palaeolithic specialists is that this statue is of a human shaman in leonine garb, and is a male. Nope, wrong. It’s a female (as you can see from the chest), and if you look at the relative length of the legs to the body then you’ll see that this is not a human, but more semblant of a feline standing on its hind legs…
And then, of course, there is the Egyptian lion-headed Goddess Sekhmet, and the Dogon Tribe from Mali. We shall have to address these wonderful curiosities later.
So, whether you wish to believe that Paschats are real, and have visited this world in the past, well, I shall leave this decision to your good selves.
We shall be exploring this as we delve into my new section. Today is the autumnal equinox, so I am in a very good mood and really not a little excited! And what made up my mind to just do it was that earlier today I wrote my story for the latest Lunar Awards Prompt Quest, which I shall be posting next in this section.
So this new section is, in part, because no one bothers with my old Wordpress site, Paschat Diplomacy, so I am essentially migrating some of it here to Substack. Part of me thought I should do it as a new publication in its own right, seeing as there can be a variety of stuff, but then there are considerations like competing with myself, having to start again with no subscribers, twice the promo work (not that I’m any good at that anyhow, but still), and, well, I’m sure there are even more considerations than that.
Perhaps I should point out, though, that you can decide which of my sections individually you wish to receive emails for – just go to your ‘manage subscription’ page (from anywhere in my site), then scroll down and toggle on/off your sections of choice. Of course I’m hoping you don’t toggle off, you know, but it’s not as if I can really stop you. Just to say you’ll be missing out if you, so there.
Here’s Sekhmet, in case you didn’t know.
So, you will still want to know what this is all about, perhaps. I mean, more about who Paschats are and what to expect from this new section. Well, I wouldn’t want to say too much about them at this stage because I want you to meet them gradually, but for those of my subscribers who like their speculative fiction, part of this section concerns a whole range of stories I have written, and will be writing, within a specific setting, all of which involve this leonine species from Sirius who were given the name Paschat by Murry Hope. The Paschat name for themselves, however, is Eyani. I’ll probably be using these names interchangeably depending on what my mind is doing at the time. You know how it is.
Murry wrote three books in particular about Paschats, namely The Lion People, The 9 lives of Tyo, and The Paschats and the Crystal People (the latter being a humanoid species from a planet called Ishna, which orbits the other star, Sirius A). But she does also mention them in some of her other works. She also wrote extensively about Atlantis, comparative mythology, and then naturally there is the Sirius Connection.
If you would like an excellent review of The 9 Lives of Tyo, by the way, then you couldn’t do any better than head on over to the lovely Kerry Jane’s Substack, Metanoia (which I highly recommend, btw), where she has done her own review. You can read it at that link.
Anyhow, you will get to meet them soon enough. Some of these stories are completely fictional, others are kind of semi-fictional, or dramatized, perhaps. Alongside these stories you will find some non-fictional, but still speculative bits of writing. So these will be of interest to those of my subscribers who are fans of speculative fiction, I am sure. Some of these will concern two of the topics I am most interested in, namely questions regarding the existence of extraterrestrial intelligences (ETI), both out there and down here, so to speak. So that includes the old spectre known as SETI (Search for ETI), and the phenomenon known as Starseeds – meaning simply those souls who consider themselves to be of extraterrestrial origin who are presently incarnated into human bodies. I mentioned Murry Hope, who was the first to write about Paschats, well, she is one such. I don’t think she ever referred to herself as a ‘Starseed’ though, and I doubt she would’ve done either. Although she wrote extensively about the occult and spirituality and suchlike, I believe she would’ve remained a little sceptical about the so-called ‘New Age’ movement, viewing it with not a little healthy suspicion, as I do.
And likewise as I do, her suspicions would not have been unfounded. As exhibit A, I would give you the so-called Exopolitics Institute. For those of you familiar with the concept of psyops and the Disclosure Project (UFOs and all that, secret government knowledge, Area 51, X-Files…), you will perhaps know that the main guy associated with this psyop is a Dr Steven Greer, who is also affiliated with the Exopolitics Institute. So for my real exhibit A, I simply inform you that they don’t ever mention Paschats!
Yep, we shall have to be writing something about that too. Stay tuned for that one. For now, let’s just call it a honeypot.
Well, let us just see how we get on for now. If this section does, indeed, turn into something sufficiently eclectic for a new publication, and there is sufficient interest in terms of subscribers, then I can definitely migrate it all.
In the meantime, by the way, you may have already encountered some of my Paschat-related stuff in the Alters section. Eyani are briefly alluded to in The End of Space Station Fifteen, and then there is the fourth outing for one of the main characters you will get to meet in this section, namely Unofficial Katy. I will migrate that story, Katy’s McGuffin, over here shortly. If you haven’t read it, it’s a highly amusing and mischievously postmodern lunar conspiracy movie, with a cracking soundtrack if I say so myself.
But as I say, this was Katy’s fourth (mis)adventure. I will be posting the first of her adventures, Ciao, SETI! in instalments in the not-too-distant future. So this should keep my spec fic fans happy. And if you need any further enticement, thus far Katy’s four misadventures amount to something like fifty-five thousand words, which is almost-novel length. And there shall be more where that came from (see below).
The other main character you will get to meet very shortly, however, is Shari’ana. She is the central character in my first anthology of stories, Rejected Messages, by the way, which you can still purchase (only as an e-book at present) from here (it’s not available on Amazon, just to let you know – I’m a socialist and somewhat bloody-minded about it too sometimes, whether it’s for my own good or not).
As for whether any of this is going to be free or paid subscriber-only, well, I thought I would do a mixture. I haven’t done any paid-only posts yet, and I don’t have any paid subscribers yet either. So maybe this is the time to try and do something about that. You can certainly have Katy’s first misadventure for free, though. Then we’ll see.
As always, please do let me know what you think in the comments if you feel like it, and I will always be grateful for your likes and your shares.
And finally, as this will be the pinned post, I will add all the links to the various posts in this section as we go along. See below. So this can be your first spaceport of call.
I hope you enjoy all of this. I will endeavour to make it enticing…
And here’s some more about the Dogon for good measure.
The Paschats Index – will be updated with links as they come
Shari’ana stories, and articles written by her – some of these are from Rejected Messages, my first self-published collection.
The Younger Horus – this is the Lunar Awards Prompt Quest #3 story, in which Shari’ana reflects on how she felt about having to leave her homeworld when she was young. I got another honourable mention in the Lunar Awards for this one (that’s three in a row!).
Taking the long way round, the other Paschat story – this is Shari’ana’s longer account of Paetri history.
Shari’ana’s letters to the United Nations Secretary General, SETI, and former US President Jimmy Carter (in response to his letter deposited on the Voyager spacecraft).
QTS 19/Mirror Mirror – this is a novella, in two parts, in which Shari’ana has to decipher the contents of the Voyager spacecraft (the golden record) and is then called to Alpha Centauri to conduct diplomacy with the humans, who have launched their very first interstellar voyage. This is going to be the longer, original versions of these two stories – the published versions are abridged and have an alternate, somewhat darker ending. This novella will have to be for paid subscribers only.
An Accidental Discovery of Violets – this is a Starseed story, with a dose of Cli-Fi, set in the medium-term future after a new flood. I think this one is really beautiful, so you’ll get this one for free.
American Visidramas, feat. Unofficial Katy & the Starseeds
I have a long index/list of stories for this intended spec fic collection. So far we have over 50k words for Katy, and a fair few others, with more to come. The first four Katy stories, in order, are the following:
Ciao, SETI! – this is your introduction to Katy. It’ll be free. That link takes you to part 1 of 8 in total. It’s about 16k words, so we’ll call that a novella.
Pinko Commie Superbunker – introducing some new characters. Katy gets called in by the world’s third richest guy, Caligula Jones, to help him design a superbunker in advance of the end of the world. This is a pretty good piss-take of that movie Don’t Look Up!, amongst other things. It’s very funny.
Katy Gone to Mars – Katy gets to visit Area 51 and take a ride on a silver machine (that’s a foo fighter, to you and me).
Katy’s McGuffin – a direct sequel to Katy Gone to Mars, in which our loveable characters get embroiled in a lunar landing conspiracy, and a movie thrown in for good measure. I’m going to archive this one soon, so if you want to read it whilst you still can, then click on that link.
Various/miscellaneous
Seeing Through the Prism of Lyra – this is a critical article/review of the publication called The Prism of Lyra, which is a ‘New Age’ document associated with the Exopolitics thing.
You may also be interested in Katrina’s DEXOS series of articles in the Liberal Socialism section of this Substack, especially parts IV and V.
…And there shall be more to come, naturally. Didn’t I tell you I’d try and make it enticing?
It's The Aliens!
I love this, and am looking forward to it!