Apocalypse

Terence McKenna has offered up the compelling image of Apocalypse as a non-event (in the sense that it marks the close of all events, the end of time as we've known it), a singularity, a white hole, sending powerful pulses of finality back through history to ruffle the sensitive tail feathers of prophets (even if most people still can't feel them, standing right next to the source).

But have prophets through the ages been looking ahead, or back, to the equally powerful biblical imagery of Daniel and Revelation? Does it all go back to the crazy, fear-inspired ramblings of a too-bright Jewish kid who had to make a big impression on King Nebuchadnezzar or be pitched into the fiery furnace? Or was Daniel just the first to catch the great wave from the future?

No telling. But either way, we're stuck with it: Apocalpyse, with all its horror and promise, all its inevitability and inconceivability.

Apocalypse is mythic, but it's becoming as real as the polluted, concrete-encrypted ground we walk upon and the genocide we watch with dinner. It's happening, and the question is, How bad does it have to get before it gets better?

The answer, according to prophets ancient and modern alike, is, "Real bad." Even in Daniel's day it didn't look good for us end-timers:

The fourth beast shall be a fourth kingdom on earth,
Which shall be different from all other kingdoms,
And shall devour the whole earth,
Trample it and break it in pieces.

Dan. 7:23

And by the time St. John tuned in, 600 years later, the other end of the future was looking downright frightening:

So I looked, and behold, a pale horse.
And the name of him who sat on it was Death,
and Hades followed with him.
And the power was given to them over a fourth of the earth,
to kill with sword, with hunger, with death,
and by the beasts of the earth.

I looked when He opened the sixth seal,
and behold, there was a great earthquake;
and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair,
and the moon became like blood.

And the stars of heaven fell to the earth,
as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken
by a mighty wind.

Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up,
and every mountain and island was moved out of its place.

And the kings of the earth, the great men,
the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men,
every slave and every free man,
hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains,
and said to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us
and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne
and from the wrath of the Lamb!

Rev. 6:8, 12-15

Nostradamus, who caught the swell another 1500 years down the line, didn't like the looks of it, either:

Men of letters shall make grand and usually boastful claims about the way I interpreted the world, before the worldwide conflagration which is to bring so many catastrophes and such revolutions that scarcely any lands will not be covered by water. . . This will be after the visible judgement of heaven, before we reach the millennium which shall complete all.

["Preface by M. Nostradamus to his Prophecies" (letter to his son Cesar), 1555]

His contemporary Mother Shipton was doused by it:

When pictures seem alive with movements free,
when boats like fishes swim beneath the sea.
When men like birds shall scour the sky.
Then half the world, deep drenched in blood shall die.

For those who live the century through
in fear and trembling this shall do.
Flee to the mountains and the dens
to bog and forest and wild fens.

For storms will rage and oceans roar
when Gabriel stands on sea and shore,
and as he blows his wondrous horn
old worlds die and new be born.

It found George Washington encamped at Valley Forge, in the winter of 1777:

And again I heard the mysterious voice saying, 'Son of the Republic, look and learn.' At this the dark, shadowy angel placed a trumpet to his mouth and blew three distinct blasts; and taking water from the ocean, he sprinkled it upon Europe, Asia, and Africa. Then my eyes beheld a fearful scene: from each of these countries arose thick, black clouds that were joined into one. And throughout this mass there gleamed a dark red light by which I saw hordes of armed men, who, moving with the cloud, marched by land and sailed by sea to America, which country was enveloped in the volume of the cloud. And I dimly saw these vast armies devastate the whole country and burn the villages, towns, and cities that I beheld were springing up.

And Mitar Tarabich, sitting in a remote Serbian village in 1860, wasn't able to get out of its way, either:

When wildflowers lose their fragrance, when grace leaves man, when rivers lose their health ... then the greatest all-out war will come .... it will be too late, because the evil ones will already ravage the whole earth and men will start to die in great numbers. Then people will run away from cities to the country and look for the mountains with three crosses, and there, inside, they will be able to breathe and drink water. Those who will escape will save themselves and their families, but not for long, because a great famine will appear.

Today, the wave crashing at the end of time baths us in its universal, continual roar; yet it's still only audible to those who, as Revelation put it, "have ears."

We may be so close to the Omega Point now, that it's nearly impossible to pick out a comprehensible signal from the tumult of white noise. Certainly, latter-day future jocks, from Edgar Cayce through to Gordon-Michael Scallion and Ed Dames, are all over the map.

Now, it almost seems that we have to look back through history to those who saw more clearly from afar. One person doing that in an impressive way is Thomas Germine, who interprets Nostradamus and the biblical prophets in Apokalypso. Although he has had limited success at scrying the near future by gazing into the dim past (and has been accused by some of resorting to smoke and mirrors), his efforts may yet bear significant fruit.

Next: The 2012 Bus — All Aboard!

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