Contemplating the Apocalypse
A Meditation on Our Time and the End of Time
“Wisdom went forth to make her dwelling among the children of men,
And found no dwelling-place:
Wisdom returned to her place, And took her seat among the angels.
And unrighteousness went forth from her chambers:
Whom she sought not she found, And dwelt with them,
As rain in a desert and dew on a thirsty land.” 1 Enoch 42: 1-3
The most enjoyable thing about writing this blog is that it has become a means for me to explore whatever idea is occupying my consciousness at the moment, which is extremely therapeutic. It has also been a very pleasant process of immersing myself in the symbols, mythology, folklore and magical lore of a particular subject. Writing here has brought me into intimate contact with a number of archetypal symbols in depth and has allowed me to process what they mean to me and where I fit in with them. For better or worse, right now the archetype that I am in dialogue with is that of the Apocalypse. Although some of the subject matter of the current post is a departure from the mostly non-political agrarian magic and folklore I usually write about, and I hope you all stay with me for this. It is deeply relevant to our core themes at The Cunning Farmer. I’m interested in the liberation of the mind from slavery to symbols, like the apocalypse. As I see it, magic is the art of using archetypal forces, symbols and spirits, to cause changes in reality. The esoteric meaning of the apocalypse is the unveiling of the hidden structure of reality, revealing the hidden truth of the ultimate nature of things. The exoteric version is the major myth for our times, and instead of liberating people, it has been used by the unscrupulous to manipulate people and its dynamic nature as spiritual force in its own right can capture and possess the unwary, turning ordinary people into fanatical followers. It can also be used for gnosis, to remove the veil of illusions that keep the true nature of the cosmos hidden from us. For this reason, it seems like the occasion of the New Year seems to be an appropriate time to pay attention to what the archetype of the End of Days has to teach us.
In the 52 years which I have occupied the planet Earth, I can always remember, from earliest childhood, psychic background noise that some world-ending cataclysm was just around the corner. Growing up in the 1970s and ‘80s, there was the constant specter of nuclear war, and the thinning ozone layer, global warming, and overpopulation all worried me as a child. I’m not sure where my nascent apocalyptic fears came from. I grew up in a more or less liberal Episcopalian family and so was spared the worst of the apocalypticism prevalent in many segments of the Christian world, but we still affirmed our collective belief in the Last Judgment and the Second Coming every Sunday when we said the Creed. I had also read the Bible and was well aware of the weird and scary parts.
I was, I admit (and this will surprise no one), an odd and neurotic kid. I was an avid reader, among other things I read civil defense manuals to learn how I could survive a nuclear war, calculating my odds as to whether our home would be out of the immediate blast zone if the oil refineries in nearby Philadelphia were to be hit (they were not good). Eventually, as a teenager, the insanity of the situation dawned on me and I became enraged that the powerful would threaten our collective survival as a species with such madness. And then came the collapse of the Soviet Union and such fears for me and most of us faded into the background. I knew that the nuclear weapons never went away, but rather that they were removed from public awareness as an object of general fear. The general fear of the culture about the prospect of world ending destruction shaped my growing consciousness and that of my generation, just like it does today.
All of the problems which could trigger doomsday scenarios have gotten dramatically worse during my lifetime. We’re really starting to see the dramatic effects of climate change on the weather, there are now 8 billion people on the planet, wars are proliferating around the world, there have been global pandemic events (woefully mishandled by the powers that be), runaway technology, especially Artificial Intelligence, is gathering momentum, a development which is having ripple effects across all areas of culture, and which will change our lives in ways we can’t even imagine. Our political situation, which I have never been satisfied with, has gotten more and more like a demented clown act. Our politicians have always been corrupt and self-serving, but they don’t even bother to hide it anymore. They are crass, greedy, and duplicitous right there in front of everyone, lying out of both sides of their mouths, and while the public feast on the madness as if it were a reality TV show (which it is). Our leaders have every likelihood of mismanaging us into doomsday at any time, whether by miring us in a foreign conflict or starting a civil war. Unknown secret aircraft roam the sky, mystery drones have been seen in many parts of the US and even overseas, and nobody knows who is operating them. Not to mention the possibility of cosmic mishaps such as solar flares or meteor strikes. The old feeling of collective anxiety, the one I grew up with, is stronger than ever. And I say collective, to distinguish it from my own personal emotional state, because I hear about it from a great diversity of sources, from all walks of life. Think about it: we all know the world is fucked up in a thousand different ways, and that it feels like a tension is building that will have to be discharged. It is definitely an exciting time to be alive!
I intend with this essay to examine the historical, mythic, and psychological dimensions of the Apocalypse archetype in the interest of making the workings of this archetype conscious, not only to expand my own learning, but to possibly prevent others from getting possessed by this ancient and dynamic psychic force. Apocalypticism, which though it can be can be inspirational to artists and reformers, can give hope to the hopeless and the downtrodden, can also empower madmen and con artists, cult leaders, and crooks, while being used to dupe the unwary into participating in the most unwholesome of mass hysteria and giving rise to violence. I hope that my exploration of this topic can contribute in some small way to helping some of us, myself included, to achieve some measure of inner peace with the momentous world changes that are occurring right before our eyes. These changes are epochal shifts the likes of which have never been seen on Earth before, capable of producing an Earthly paradise or reducing our planet to smoking ruins. Or, most likely, some as yet unfathomable future somewhere in between.
Much of the discussion will feature unpacking the version of the mythos that comes down to us from the Jewish and Christian traditions that have been so influential in shaping the Western world picture. The word apocalypse, which derives from the Greek word apokalypsis, meaning unveiling or uncovering, a revelation, also refers to the Christian Scripture known as the Book of Revelation, the final book of the New Testament, which pertains to the events of the Last Days, in theological parlance the Eschaton, which in Greek, refers to the ultimate Divine act which ends the physical cosmos and institutes God’s Kingdom on Earth. Many competing versions and variants of this myth are pervasive these days, in books, movies, TV and the Internet, and the myth has grown to include both secular and religious forms.
In the modern world one can hardly escape the constant stream of doom that is being forced upon us from all directions in popular media. Much of it is hyperbolic hysteria, but it is based on the very real fact that we are living in times of unprecedented environmental, social, cultural, and technological change. Time honored mores and values have disintegrated in the space of several generations, cherished institutions have lost their hold on the culture, leading to a desire among many to return to simpler times, when values were more clear and people didn’t question the roles into which they were born. That some of those institutions were corrupt and antiquated doesn’t make their loss any less jarring to those who long for simpler times. The conflict between those who desire social and political change and those who want to hold it back has blossomed into unprecedented divisiveness and, especially here in the United States, has been exploited by politicians who promise to return the country to its former greatness. In fact those politicians are interested in accelerating the technocratic revolution that is deepening the class divide, while destroying communities and the environment. These politicians are fine with the massive cultural change that arises from the unforeseen consequences of technological innovation, as long as nobody questions the gender, race, and power roles they were assigned at birth.
Some in this power cult are convinced that the pervasive erosion of the prestige and influence of institutions such as the family, the church, and traditional gender roles is evidence that we are indeed living in the End of Days, and that they are called by God to be some sort of vanguard of the Millennium, the the thousand year kingdom foretold in the Book of Revelation. The Millennium, is to be instituted, or so some interpretations of this most psychedelic part of the Bible tell us, after the defeat of the Antichrist by the Forces of Good. Many people today actually live mythically in this grand narrative of the End Times, in which the Chosen Remnant of God’s people are engaged in a pitched battle with the forces of darkness for the control of the planet we all call home. In the final battle with the forces of Satan, the Earth, they believe, will ultimately be destroyed and God will rebuild it for the faithful (so there is no need to care for the environment). In this battle there is no middle ground, you are either with God or against. Our political classes exploit this myth cynically, although some of them are probably unhinged enough to believe it.
Far from being a discredited remnant of ancient history, apocalyptic religious belief is a major force which shapes American foreign policy right now, especially with regards to the Middle East and specifically Israel and Palestine. Support for devastating Israeli policies in Gaza is strong among Evangelical Christians in the US and official policy reflects this strong sentiment. Many in power here believe that this conflict is a religious war which is a prelude to the final Biblical battle of Armageddon, which they believe to have been foretold in the Book of Revelation. A strict reading of the text, Rev. 16:16, however, does not say that this place, in the text, Megiddo (a real place in Northern Israel), is the site of the battle, but merely a massing point for the forces of evil. This potent myth has been used many times throughout history as a warrant for genocide, and as propaganda to rally the support of the faithful behind a real world policy which causes real damage to flesh and blood human beings caught in the conflict. In this case the “forces of evil” include Palestinian civilians, noncombatant men, women, and children, trapped and starving in the ruins. In addition to the needless suffering of innocents, there is a clear danger that this conflict could spread beyond the borders of the state of Israel and become a global conflict. In real life, however, there will be no peaceful Millennium for the faithful in the aftermath, no Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. That kingdom is already here in the hearts of those who act with love for their neighbors and enemies and will never be achieved through violence of any kind.
In order to understand the origins of this ancient narrative, let us take a moment to unpack the historical parameters of the apocalyptic mythos:
Many ancient cultures had a conception of an all pervasive divinely ordained order that structured the cosmos and that was reflected in the human realm. The orderly motion of the heavens under the government of the mighty life-giving Sun was mirrored in the mighty empires of the ancient world in which the Divine King, Emperor, or Pharaoh maintained the cosmic order in the human realm. Creation of the cosmos, a word itself which means “order”, involved, in many mythologies, the destruction of a chaos-monster, a frightful creature, such as the Babylonian Tiamat, that had to be destroyed in order for creation to proceed. In Egyptian mythology, the cosmic order, called ma’at, (which in later times was personified by a goddess of the same name) was constantly threatened by the cosmic forces of chaos, which they called isfet, which constantly threatened to overwhelm the divine order. The forces of isfet were personified by the monstrous and evil god Apep, the serpent-like embodiment of primordial chaos. As the Sun god Ra descended into the underworld each night, he did battle with Apep, only to emerge victorious each day rising triumphant from the night’s battle.
But Apep was not the only agent of isfet. The forces of chaos were always there waiting at the margins to overwhelm the divinely ordained social order in the form of threats from foreign nations, epidemics, droughts, crop failures, civil unrest and the like. Thus our ancient predecessors (as this attitude was commonplace among all ancient peoples, surviving even in our own modern religion and politics) envisioned an eternal struggle between the forces of chaos and order, and it was the task of the ruler to maintain the balance.
In ancient Judaism, Yahweh, the head of the pantheon, who was eventually to become the sole universal divinity for three of the world’s major religions, also defeated the forces of chaos at the time of creation in order to establish the divine order. The creation narrative in Genesis is rather vague on this subject, but later scriptures, such as the Book of Job, record tantalizing fragments of Yahweh’s heroic battles with the fantastic monsters of Hebrew mythology such as Behemoth and Leviathan, themselves stemming from a common Near-Eastern mythical ancestry with Tiamat, whose defeat by Marduk in the Mesopotamian creation epic allowed for the creation of the cosmos. Indeed the Hebrew phrase in the text of Genesis 1 which describes the formless void that precedes creation is tohu va-bohu. The word tohu, is linked etymologically through the Biblical word tehom, usually translated as “abyss”, with the name of Tiamat, the Mesopotamian chaos monster. We will meet with Leviathan and Behemoth again in our discussion of the most famous Christian Apocalypse , the Book of Revelation, in which the primordial chaos monsters return at the End of Days for a final battle with the armies of God.
A spiritual crisis in Judaism began when historical external events led to a perception of the collapse of the divinely ordained social order, for example during the destruction of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem and the capture and subsequent captivity of the greater part of the Jewish people in 6th and 7th century BCE. During and after the captivity, the mythic imagination of the conquered nation beloved of the One True God set about constructing a new narrative in which the conquest of God’s own nation could begin to make sense. One explanation favored by the prophets, such as Hosea, who predates the conquest but whose attitude of strict monotheism became favored in the Post-Exilic period, was that God allowed the conquerors to be victorious in order to punish the Jewish people for worshipping the other gods who had once been a part of the pre-Yahwist pantheon. This was a very convincing argument and became dominant in the Second Temple period. Yahweh had, for His own reasons, allowed the forces of chaos to prevail in order to punish His people for insufficient fidelity.
Another myth began to take shape in the imaginal realm, in the visions of learned Jewish visionaries and scholars, a mythic narrative somehow deeply influenced by Persian stories of cosmological conflict in the Zoroastrian mythic corpus, Indeed much of the dualistic flavor of what would become apocalypticism arose from the ancient religion of Persia, founded by a sage known as Zoroaster, and which was the official religion of the Persian Empire at the time of the Persian conquest of Babylon. The conquest brought this religion, Zoroastrianism, into contact with captive Jewish intellectuals. This form of the worldview has an ancient pedigree, perhaps originating in ancient Indo-European traditions of a cosmic conflict between the forces of order and chaos, which became enshrined in the traditions of Zoroaster and developed into a myth of a final struggle between Good and Evil. In this mythic conflict we can recognize the by now familiar theme of the decisive defeat of Evil for all time and the establishment of a perfected kingdom for the righteous remnant, as well as the advent of a Messiah-like world savior, the Saoshyant, “whose coming will make the world perfect”, in the words of Norman Cohn, a belief which was “clung to when the Zoroastrian community has suffered its greatest disasters.”
The next phase of the development of this myth can be traced to the 6th and 7th centuries BCE, the period following the rebuilding of the Second Temple in the time of Cyrus the Great. In this time the religious movement arose among the traumatized survivors of these conflicts which became known to scholars as Apocalypticism. These movements and their associated texts feature a mystical revelation of the workings of Heaven and the Divine realm. The texts arising from this movement, which are known as Apocalypses, involve a heavenly journey by a mythic protagonist, such as the Biblical patriarch Enoch, who was taken to heaven and shown the hidden machinery of creation and the mythic history of the Fall of the angels, as well as the future punishment of the sinful by God and the good angels.
The literature of apocalypticism is rich in symbolism. Scholar and historian Norman Cohn calls it “a learned genre, and the smell of midnight oil pervades it”. Unlike the Biblical prophets, who heard the voice of God directly, the apocalypticists received their revelations in dreams and visions where they communicated with angelic intermediaries and were shown the secrets of the inner workings of the cosmos and the unfolding of the divine plan. The roots of the genre, according to Cohn, lay equally in the Biblical tradition of prophecy as well as in the Babylonian class of sages and “wise men”, who “specialized in ‘cosmological wisdom’-- astronomy, meteorology, the geography of the known world and the mythical geography of paradise; while others specialized in ‘mantic wisdom’, the art of interpreting dreams.” The numerous works of the Jewish apocalyptic tradition include the Biblical Book of Daniel, and the apocryphal works in the Enochic tradition, One Enoch, the Slavonic Enoch, also known as Two Enoch, and the Book of Jubilees. These fascinating and visionary works detail topics such as the fall of the angels and the creation of the monstrous Nephilim which are mentioned in passing in the Biblical creation account, as well as astronomical topics like the structure of the heavens and meteorological topics like the storehouses of the rain, snow, and the winds, as well as calendrical lore. As in all of the other apocalyptic texts, the Enochic texts depict the descent of sinful humanity into chaos, and the final purging of the world by divine forces.
The sect who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, identified by the Jewish historian Josephus with the Essenes, also shared a strongly apocalyptic outlook which can be seen in the document known as the War Scroll, which is among those that survive from their community, and which detail a vasts cosmic battle between the Sons of Light (the community) under the command of the Archangel Michael and the Sons of Darkness (everyone else, but mostly the Kittim, meaning the Romans and Greeks) under the command of the devil, Belial, for the salvation of the cosmos. In the document the battle is waged through seven phases, with darkness or light victorious in turns, until God intervenes decisively in the final act, establishing a messianic kingdom of “healing and great peace in a long life, a crown of glory together with resplendent attire in radiant light” and for the Sons of Darkness, “eternal perdition by the fury of God’s vengeful wrath, everlasting terror and endless shame, together with disgrace of annihilation in the fire of the dark regions.”
The similarities between this scenario of the Last Days and the Christian account of the eschaton in the Book of Revelation are unmistakable, and the influence of the Jewish apocalyptic literature on the visionary revelation received by St. John while on the prison island of Patmos is clear. With the advent of the Christian movement in the first century CE apocalyptic literature entered a new phase. There is much apocalyptic material in the Gospels themselves, indicating that the historical Jesus was probably himself an apocalyptic preacher, and that the message of final conflict and redemption from fallen history by the ultimate triumph of God against the forces of chaos and evil, was most likely a part of his teachings.
As with many other texts in the genre, the scenario of the Book of Revelation depicts the return of the forces of Chaos, the actual monsters defeated by God in the beginning return again for a rematch at the end. Leviathan, Behemoth and Satan in the form of a great dragon all arise and join the fray in an attempt to return the cosmos to a state of primordial chaos. The historical figure of Jesus emerges as a cosmic world savior to lead the forces of light to their ultimate triumph. An angel, perhaps the Archangel Michael defeats Satan and binds him in a pit for the symbolic period of one thousand years, inaugurating the kingdom of the Millenium, a time of perfect peace for the faithful, perhaps on Earth (although the text is not specific, that is the usual interpretation), until the final battle in which evil is defeated decisively for all time. The text is rich in beautiful symbolic imagery depicting the peaceable kingdom of Heaven, the New Jerusalem at the end of time, a city that is a jeweled mandala of celestial geometry. Many symbolic characters grace the drama who have been a rich source of projections for generations of apocalyptic Christians who for two thousand years have read the figures of temporal history into their religious documents.
Now that we have mapped out a general outline of the historical parameters of the apocalyptic literature, we can move on to the psychological implications, our real concern here. As we have said beyond being a category of literature which is still believed literally by a troublingly large number of modern people, it is a living symbol, an archetype, a spiritual entity, that can obsess, possess or inspire people who engage with it. There is a sense in which the apocalypse archetype can render a mundane reality more meaningful, by turning ordinary people into participants in a cosmic drama. This is a species of enchantment, however it is not necessarily a wholesome form of enchantment, depending on the apocalypse one is living in.
Jungian psychologist Edward Edinger stressed the dynamic and agentic quality of the archetype in his aptly titled book on the subject, The Archetype of the Apocalypse, saying the archetype of the apocalypse is “ a primordial psychic pattern of the collective unconscious that is at the same time a dynamic agency with intentionality. When it constellates, it generates itself and manifests itself in the individual psyche and the collective psyche of the group it happens to touch. Put differently, archetypes live themselves out in whatever psychic stuff they can appropriate; they are like devouring mouths finding little egos they can consume, and then living out of those egos. The Apocalypse archetype certainly constellated very powerfully at the beginning of the Christian aeon, and that is why so much apocalyptic literature was generated at that time. Now, again on the threshold of a new aeon this same archetype is constellating very powerfully.” For readers not familiar with Jungian psychology, the idea that symbols have agency and intentionality which consume human egos and live through them is going to sound outrageous, but if you look at how archetypal symbols, and particularly this one, often have a life of their own, which plays out across time the in the dreams, visions and social movements of human hosts, you may begin to agree.
Edinger says that the archetype of the apocalypse is powerfully active in our day and that this is the sign of our living in a time of profound transformation. In an individual psyche, apocalyptic dreams signal a time in the life of great personal transformation and growth, and in the collective psyche the proliferation of apocalyptic themes and groups likewise signal great transformation in the culture at large. Many of us find ourselves wondering what is happening and what it all means, to which Edinger replies:
“The answers to these questions are dealt with collectively in large-scale regressive phenomena: the atavistic return to religious Fundamentalisms; the disintegration of complex social structures and reversion to more primitive social arrangements; massive collective shadow projections leading to factional wars and violence of all kinds on all social levels (from the family, to the neighborhood gang, and on up to the national level); and by widespread despair leading to increases in suicide and to addictions of all kinds. In general, there occurs a disintegration of social and psychic structures and values which have been the architecture of the collective psyche-no longer "contained" by an operative religious myth. And I see these tendencies as potentially being so widespread that they generate vast waves of psychic contagion tending to infect even those who might otherwise have sufficient consciousness to resist them. Vast collective psychic moods have immense contagious power.” (Edinger, Edward, The Archetype of the Apocalypse)
Does any of this sound like the world we live in today? This state of affairs was already well underway when Dr. Edinger wrote these words in 1999, at the turn of the Millenium, a date loaded with eschatological significance. Carl Jung, writing in the 1950 in his spiritual classic Answer to Job could see the proverbial writing on the wall (to reference the apocalyptic Book of Daniel), noting that the predicament of modern humanity at the birth of the atomic age, when the sort of power the Book of Revelation imputed to God came to be possessed by humanity itself: the power to destroy the world. As in the apocalypse we see the Divine capacity for evil revealed, as in the modern age we can no longer turn away from the human capacity for evil.
In Jung's own words:
“Since the [the writing of the] Apocalypse we now know again that God is not only to be loved, but also to be feared. He fills us with evil as well as with good, otherwise he would not need to be feared; and because he wants to become man, the uniting of his antinomy must take place in man. This involves man in a new responsibility. He can no longer wriggle out of it on the plea of his littleness and nothingness, for the dark God has slipped the atom bomb and chemical weapons into his hands and given him the power to empty out the apocalyptic vials of wrath on his fellow creatures. Since he has been granted an almost godlike power, he can no longer remain blind and unconscious. He must know something of God’s nature and of metaphysical processes if he is to understand himself and thereby achieve gnosis of the Divine.” (Jung, C.G., Answer to Job, p. 99)
In Jung and Eddinger’s view, the current modern predicament, although frightening, is a unique opportunity for collective spiritual growth, for the expansion of consciousness on a global scale. Indeed it seems to be the only way out. As a species we have failed to face up to our own capacity for evil and destruction, to our own atavistic animal instincts that erupt from the depths of our unconscious in our projections onto the other, whoever or wherever it might be. God, however we conceive of the Divine, has made the world exactly as it is, full of hatred, pain, and evil, as well as the good and beautiful things of life. Likewise the human being is capable of both the sublime and the diabolical, and is endowed with a consciousness uncommon in nature and has the ability to confront and assimilate the darkness, both divine and human in a quest for wholeness. This is what Jung was referring to as “gnosis of the divine”.
But can we do it? Will our species rise to the occasion and change in time to avoid destruction? Who knows? Historical processes are slow to unfold, beyond the lifetime of individuals. Barring a sudden catastrophe, things could continue on a downward course for some time, or the world could come to an irrevocable crisis sooner, we just don’t know. When envisioning the future, it’s hard not to come under the power of the archetype and its mind altering sway.
Realistically, I can imagine many people rising to the spiritual challenge of the times, whatever that may look like, only to confront the “regressive phenomena” Edinger was referring to in others. The only way forward for those of us who want to rise to this challenge is the way of peace and example, and to defeat the egregores of the oppressors by spiritual means by not allowing them to haunt our minds and spirits. A revolution of gnosis.
An important mid twentieth century thinker, the Catholic priest, philosopher, and scientist, Teilhard De Chardin, a man of deep faith and subtle thought, believed in a unique version of the Christian apocalyptic hope of a saving union with the Divine at the end of time. He posited the idea of an Omega Point, a telos to which all history is moving inexorably. De Chardin’s thought is complex and to do justice to it would require more space than we have here, but briefly he believed that modern humanity was in the process of creating a global network of consciousness that would unify the whole world, or rather that the process itself was using humanity to accomplish its goal of psychic unification. This unified collective mind he called the noosphere. From our vantage point in the 21st century his prediction seems frighteningly prescient, as he seems to have predicted the Internet and the global network of communication that has come to connect the whole world. Writing in 1946 he said: “No one can deny that a network (a world network) of economic and psychic affiliations is being woven at ever-increasing speed which envelops and constantly penetrates more deeply within each of us. With every day that passes it becomes a little more impossible for us to act or think otherwise than collectively.” Nearly 80 years later the network he envisioned is on the verge of becoming itself conscious.
Teilhard envisioned that noosphere would bring about a peaceful spiritual unification of humanity, eventually bringing about a profound sympathy between human beings, even telepathic communication would become commonplace. “Humanity” he wrote, “is building its composite brain beneath our eyes. May it not be that tomorrow, through the logical and biological deepening of the movement drawing it together, it will find its heart, without which the ultimate wholeness of its powers of unification can never be fully achieved? To put it in other words, must not the constructive developments now taking place within the Noosphere in the realm of sight and reason necessarily also penetrate to the sphere of feeling? The idea may seem fantastic when one looks at our present world, still dominated by the forces of hatred and repulsion. But it is not this simple because we refuse to heed the admonitions of science which is daily proving to us, in every field, that seemingly impossible changes become easy when there is a change in the order of the dimensions.”
Father Teilhard’s personal faith in the Divine purpose of the human species informs him, as he assures his readers, that the human experiment will not fail, that humanity will achieve the goal that was set for it by creation itself, the reaching of the Omega Point. It is some comfort, perhaps to be reassured by one of the greatest spiritual minds of the last century, that we will not wipe ourselves out, but will instead reach the transcendent eschatological goal of final unity with our Source. I am not entirely convinced, ultimately, but it is a hope to cling to in these chaotic times, times in which as Jung said, “...there is a mood of world destruction and world renewal that has set its mark upon our age. The mood makes itself felt everywhere, politically, socially, and philosophically. We are living in what the Greeks called kairos –the right time– for a “metamorphosis of the gods”, i.e. of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take into account this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science.” These words are more true now as they were when they were written in 1957, nearly three quarters of a century ago. The transformation is ongoing.
Rather than a progressive, linear model of history, I see history as the unfolding of a cycle of ages, too vast to see the beginning and having no end, but ever transforming according to the arising of archetypal forces from the World Soul which guide the development of our species. One model for this has been the procession of the equinoxes, in which the rising Sun at the moment of the spring equinox is slowly moving backwards against the order of the signs of the Zodiac, now arising in late Pisces where it has been rising since before the turn of the epoch over 2,000 years ago at the dawn of the Christian Era. The equinoctial point is moving into the sign of Aquarius which is said to mark the beginning of the Age of Aquarius, a time of great change and upheaval. Jung tried to calculate the beginning of the new age, arriving at several different dates, writing in a footnote to his book Aion that, “Astrologically the beginning of the next aeon, according to the starting point you select, falls between A.D. 2000 and 2200.” Jung leaned toward the earlier estimate, putting the start date for the new aeon in our own time. At any rate we are either in or on the cusp of a new phase of the cycle, and that is why we are experiencing a time of fundamental transformation, a phase shift from one era to another. Jung, quoting the Sibylline Books, wrote of this time: Lucifer vires accendit Aquarius acres, meaning “Lucifer sets aflame Aquarius’ harsh forces”. For Jung this time meant a confrontation with our own shadow, a process necessary for evolutionary growth.
In closing, in this exploration of the historical moment in which we live, I want to emphasize the importance of having a good perspective on this historical moment. Based on what we can see about the nature of the cosmos and the divine, we certainly aren’t living in a Biblical End Times scenario. No domestic politician is the Savior, no foreign politician is the Great Beast or Leviathan, and if they start to try to play the role of figures from the apocalyptic script, then they are performing a ritual drama to invoke the archetype (magic, in other words) for the purpose of manipulating the unwary and altering collective reality. Nobody is coming to save us from ourselves, we humans are both Christ and Satan, the enemy and the savior, the danger and the redemption. We are sparks of the divine coming to self realization in this moment. The cosmic Christ is the Anthropos, the divine image of humanity to which we are all moving, to realize the potential of this moment we must realize our inner darkness and bring it to the light. Practically I don’t know what this will look like. Probably not very pretty. Perhaps De Chardin was right and the human experiment is destined to succeed, but I can’t imagine that it will be easy. I see difficult times ahead, and this process unfolding over generations, with decisive developments happening in our own time that will shake the foundations of our lives. We should endeavor to continue to live good lives in any way that we can, to help others and heal where we can, to care for nature and one another, to practice and teach essential survival skills as our knowledge allows, to be kind and compassionate to those on their own journey and to be fearless in the face of danger. We all face our own last day eventually which fate has ordained for us at the beginning. The apocalypse doesn’t change that.
In terms of being prepared for change like this, I think that way of violence, of amassing arms and ammo is a very bad road to go down. There is so much of that in the world already. But learning how to grow crops and take care of livestock are important skills to have in any time. First aid and herbalism are always useful to know, and it never hurts to stock up on staple foods and other essentials. For magical practitioners, the normal skills of warding and banishing, maintaining relationships with your spirits, and doing protection magic to ward off harmful egregores are always helpful practices. It seems that some of the main challenges in hard times are moral and ethical, how you can balance the virtues of kindness, generosity, and compassion against the necessity of preserving the safety of loved ones and community. It seems, therefore, that developing the spiritual maturity to face difficult situations with equanimity and kindness is a good place to start, so I’m going to begin there. I definitely need to practice. Goddess help us!
I send my love and sincerest thanks to you all, along with best wishes for a safe, healthy, and prosperous 2025!
-Todd
Works referenced:
Jung, C. G.: Aion,
Answer to Job
The Undiscovered Self
Cohn, Norman: Cosmos, Chaos, and the World to Come
Charles, R.H.: The Book of Enoch, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament Vol. 2
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin: The Future of Man
The Phenomenon of Man
Edinger, Edward: The Archetype of the Apocalypse
Some would say the problem in all these creation stories is they choose to fight the Chaos instead of embracing it. Just sayin'.