Near the Day of Purification, there will be cob webs spun back and forth in the sky.
A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans.
| Translations of the Hopi Prophecies sung in the film Koyaanisqatsi - Life Out Of Balance by Godfrey Reggio (1985). |
This text is mainly meant as supplementary material for my essay, 'Human Decision Required' on British 1970's sci-fi television series Space: 1999, but might be also of interest to those looking for more info on esoteric thinking and belief systems in general.
This following excerpt comes from The Magician's Dictionary by E.E. Rehmus and represents quite well those beliefs and ideas, which traditional and also modern mystics have placed on apocalypse, in some cases (e.g. the predictions of Nostradamus) connected with the year 1999. Some ideas and terms presented here may appear somewhat vague and obscure for a layman, so there is also a separate glossary section. I recommend also checking out Neuro Links page for more links on mysticism and esoteric thinking.
APOCALYPSE: 1999?
The following article from Magician's Dictionary by E.E. Rehmus (Feral House 1990)
We are aware that the Muslims insist that the can be no Universal Eschatonic Implosion until the world has endured "40 years of rain". We would remind them that we have endured more than forty years of the "rain" of nuclear radiation and pollution [NB: this text was written in 1988 -ER]. Aztec prophesies place the end of the world in the 20th Century. The Great Pyramid is said to contain, in its mystical measurements, similar predictions in stone of which the last is Sept. 17, 2001 AD. 2000 is commonly believed by Western Civilization to be the year of the Eschaton. The date given by Nostradamus, on the other hand , is slightly pre-millennial, 1999. This is just 13 years prior to the end of the great 160,000-year Mayan Cycle and Terence McKenna's Timescape Zero (based on Ancient Chinese cycles), both at 2012 C.E. And although many other cite 2020, there are interesting reasons for seizing on 1999.
First of all, there is a scientific reason. As meteorologists have noted, the 11-year sunspot cycles which serve to heat the earth, have not only been increasing in severity, they have progressively exacerbated the greenhouse effect. This resulted, during the drought of 1988, in the first of the summer-long record-breaking temperatures. In '99 the sunspot activity could well have a cataclysmic effect.
Metaphysically, however, there are more compelling reasons. Since the exact interface between the end of the Christian Aeon of Pisces and the beginning of the Humanist Aeon of Aquarius is impossible to pinpoint, we are thrown back on sheer numerology. 1+9+9+9 = 28 = 2+8 = 10, numerologically and Pythagoras-wise ten is the number of perfect completion. In other words 1999 is the natural completion of the Aeon, whereas 2000 is simply a thousandfold manifestation of the Duality, Two - that epitome of evil amongst numbers. (From the cosmic point of view, the end of the world isn't necessarily evil.) The date, January 16, 1999 adds up to 9. That date is also Julian Day number 2,451,195, which adds up to 9 as well. Ironically enough, most computer predictions of disaster, based on current ecological trends, ozone levels, demographic patterns, etc. predict the peak somewhere between January, 1999 and September, 2013 - by which time the population of the earth will be nine billion and the "end" of the human yardstick on this planet will have come.
And, although the Bible stipulates that "no man knoweth the day or the hour" of the last day, I do not hesitate to name the 9th second, of the 9th minute of the 9th hour of January 16, 1999 as the eschaton (or the 9th day of the 9th month, September).
As one of the Archons of the Ending Aeons, I have chosen 999 as my personal sigil, however, and not 1999, because I want to ally myself with the spirit of the ending process, rather than with the End itself. Moreover, from an optimistic point of view, 999 is cabalistically virginal - it has nothing written on it. However, I see no reason to dispute '99 as the Climax of the Apocalypse, and I use that most useful point of the Eschaton as the date in my own eschaton-count. My newtime (13 month) calendar begins approximately on the winter solstice of 2000 (Newtime Year Zero), displacing Gregorian Time forever. Hence, I count forward from 1999, calling 1989 Year Minus 10, 1990 Year Minus 10, etc.
It should be pointed out that "end of the world" predictions are always cropping up. For instance, there was Rev. Whisenant's eschatonic prediction that September 13 [NB: also the exact date of the first episode of Space: 1999, "Breakaway", where Moon leaves planet Earth's gravitational field - with the apparent consequences to Earth that could only be described "eschatological" in the sense used in this text! -ER], 1988 would be the end of the world. Newspapers were gleeful in reporting that the date came and went. What they failed to realize is that 1988 was in fact the beginning of the end, since it was the year when the greenhouse effect was, for the very first time, widely acknowledged as the harbinger of the end. If nothing else, 1988 was the year in which the "Shroud of Turin" was finally pronounced an error by the Vatican. At any rate, the good Rev's numerology may have been naive and the particular date he chose may have had little synchronistic sparkle to it [unless, let it be said again, one is a devoted fan of Space: 1999! -ER], but his prediction wasn't entirely off the wall. Isn't it always the eleventh hour? At least sub specie aeterni tatis?
But with the 20th Century we leave eternity behind and enter the dimensional worlds. The date Whisenant gave has another meaning. As you know, we stand in the slough of time and at the perimeters of various religio/magical aeons - including the multitudinous segments of the Galilean era - all of which end at different points. And the prophecies are fulfilled at different velocities in different ways. The worlds "ends" perennially because "World" derivers from Anglo-Saxon wer-aeld ("Man-Age" or "Human Time").
Part of our confusion has to do with the fact that we tend to use "the world" and "the earth" as though they were synonyms. The earth is merely one of the stages on which the drama of the world is enacted. From the Olympian point of view, the end of a world isn't necessarily evil. Everything has its aeld. Even the gods have their time. Even the dinosaurs had an "Age," so the toymakers tell us. The word for "world," in every language, is in invariably linked to the notion of time. Arabic duniya, "the present (world)." Hebrew olam, "eternity." Latin mundus, originally a division into sections (of time), like the Greek kosmos. And religion is always, sooner or later, part of that chronometry.
It amazes me that people, especially gullible Xtians [as E.E. Rehmus calls Christians -ER], can be so blind as to expect everything to go on as it has done for millions of years when the end has, in fact, arrived. By now it should be clear even to rotting elephants and establishment flakes that the fulfillment of prophesies is at hand. Even technocratic capitalism concedes that any time between now and the early 21st Century pollution, population, drought, disease and famine will have hit their strides (the "four horsemen" as the four elements: polluted air, sewage-laden water, barren earth, radioactive fire). Therefore 2000 also marks the beginning of the Age of Aquarius and the Piscean "Age of Jesus." After that date the Christians (all of whom by then will have been swept up into the arms of their Redeemer) will find themselves, or so asserts self-styled Neo-Xtian, Constance Cumbey, "preserved in their own bubble of spiritual sterility on the dimensional shelf of an alternate reality," where they may eternally contemplate the wonder of their salvation. Meanwhile, mankind's post-holocaustic, enlightened remnant (should such a remnant, by any miracle, remain) will be free to move ahead... to? Incidentally, by the word "holocaust" I do not refer to war but to the destruction of the biosphere by the ravages of unchecked human growth.
For remarks on The return of Christ or "Second Coming," see PAROUSIA. Meanwhile, the elect, who are still being sacrificed, already inhabit the New Jerusalem. The safe and sound remainder are not saved at all, despite their belief. They call themselves Xtians, but they are Philistines. The zealous guardians of the faith are precisely those about whom Matthew was shouting, "Not everyone who saith unto me Lord, Lord shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven!" and of whom Mark said, "But woe to them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days." Those who remain are increasingly damned to the hell that earth is henceforth becoming. September 13, 1988 was the last day before it would be too late to begin the task of repairing the biosphere and reversing the daily descent to terracide. So the jubilant laughter of Whisenant's scoffers begins to sound increasingly hollow, doesn't it?
Obviously, there are many of us who, though raised in the Xtian tradition, can view the Apocalyptic experience which the world is undergoing even now, without falling gibbering to our knees in a final paroxysm of millennial conversion - no matter what happens henceforth, most of us will retain our Neo-Gnostic and Neo-Pagan allegiances and avoid the horror of "Salvation."
Other cultures are more confrontational. Coinciding with the Xtian Apocalypse is the Hopi ending of the "Fourth World." In their system, evolution produces new strengths but also creates new bad habits which must periodically be burned away. Those who have not been corrupted will become the seed people of the next world. Amongst Hindus a Yuga (q.v.) is an "age" and rather than living in the world, Hindus tend to think of themselves as living in an "age" - at present, the age is the evil Kali Yuga (quite similar, in fact, to our own "apocalyptic era" and not necessarily longer). The Chinese also live in an older world. As of this writing (1988), this is year 4686 for them. And for the Jews it's 5748. But the Mayans (q.v.) live in inconceivably vast ages, called baktuns and the current one ends in 2012, our time. The "Harmonic Convergence" of July, 1987, marked the entry, for the Mayans, into the final lustrum of the penultimate 20-year period, before the "hotting up" time of 1992, which is the beginning of the final 20 years of a 160,000 year cycle!
The "world" is, in a very real sense, however, the creation of those who dwell in it. Thus, when our forefathers created the United States, they quite deliberately and correctly referred to this as a "new world" and gave the Great Seal the designation Novus Ordo Seclorum ("New Order of the Ages"), which you can still read on every dollar bill. But every maker of a "new" world, whether secular or religious, brings in his own "Age." The makers of the République Française, after the Revolution of 1789, even came up with a brand new calendar to mark their "new age," complete with new names for the months. Anton LaVey, high priest of the San Francisco Church of Satan, proclaimed 1966 as the beginning of the "New Satanic Age." Jesus Christ, arriving at the beginning of the Piscean Age, brought with him an automatic 2000-year non-renewable lease on time, which runs out in this century, the beginning of the Aquarian Age. Magicians also fabricate their own elaborate times - Aleister Crowley, for instance, began his "Age of Horus" in 1904. Moreover, although it might be expected to have ended at his death in 1947, his followers, seeing him as an immortal, still maintain Crowley's "Thelemite" calendar. In that system, 1990, C.E. would be AN 86.
Crowley's aeon was itself superseded in 1947 (the year of the saucers) when the doorway to the Hell of Universe B was opened by Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard, whence the "Forgotten Ones" are now penetrating this world. In 1980 Mickey Mouse and Jesus joined forces to end personal liberty in the United States (the end of the Democratic Party forever). In 1985 the Hopis announced the end of the 5th World, henceforth man would obliged to boost his own stock, somehow. In July of 1987, the world entered the final lustrum of the penultimate katun of the Mayan aeon - another time of tribulation. 1992 is the beginning of yet another 20-year Battle of Armageddon. On January 6, 1999, Julian Day 2,451,195, the world will end by Nostradamus's calculation. Few will notice, perhaps, since the "end" refers merely to the official passing of the Galilean Age and the world will be so desperately struggling to survive that there will be little time for outmoded messiahs.
Zoroaster, who died in 1000 B. C., will be reborn and complete the end of futility and Ahriman's rule. His seed at the bottom of a lake, it was prophesied, would thrice conceive maidens at millennial points. The final incarnation will be as Saoshyant, The Redeemer. Thus 2000 A.D. marks the final chapter in the Zoroastrian cycle and yet another eschaton in our time.
Finally, it should be noted, in 2012, Terence McKenna's Timescape reaches Absolute Zero, the point of infinite novelty. (See AUTOPOETIC LAPIS.) And, interestingly, Jung also predicted the outer limit as occurring approximately fifty years after his death, which was in 1961.
You will understand that these "end of the world" dates constitute a map of reality, but are obviously not Reality itself. One doesn't necessarily visit every town on the map. We can choose to live out our alloted span to 1999 or 2012, and perhaps save the world, after all, or we can commit mass suicide beforehand in any of a hundred different ways, thus escaping the horror that is building up. The date of the Apocalypse isn't important. What matters is its immediacy. We have to understand that we've reached the outer limit of our dimension - THERE IS NO FUTURE - or at least, very little. Like the amoeba in his drop of water it's time to turn away from the edge and move back to the center.
At any rate, by now it should be clear that we're moving quickly, not only metaphysically and synchronistically, but literally into the charged nexus of all the "ending aeons," into a kind of central transformer which is approaching its limit like an overworked fuse. The task of the archons of the ending aeons is to guide the confused through the wreckage of our disintegrating civilization.
Copyright © 1990 E.E. Rehmus. Reprinted with permission.
