The Magician's Dictionary. Edward E. Rehmus
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ANUBIS — The dog or jackal-headed Egyptian God who served as guide to the underworld and weigher of the dead man’s heart for its truthfulness.
APO PANTOS KAKODAIMONOS — Greek banishing mantram (“Depart from me all evil demons!”).
APOCALYPSE — We are aware that the Muslims insist that there 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. Aztec prophecies 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-millennnial, 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 others 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 Christan 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 projections 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 populaton 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 Apocalpyse, 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, 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