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, 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, 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 world “ends” perennially because “World” derives 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 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, 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 dear even to rotting elephants and establishment flakes that the fulfillment of the prophecies 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 offical end of 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 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 almost 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 beinning 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 be 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