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 was prophesied, would thrice conceive maidens at three 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.
APOCATASTASIS — A closed reincarnational loop wherein the same lifetime is re-experienced over and over again with no alteration of details. Says Nicoll, in Living Time: ...“it is in life that we have to ‘perfect’ ourselves. If we limit ‘this life’ to one single journey between birth and death there is not enough time. People give up trying just because of this appearance of things. They do not bend the life round in a circle, but leave the whole matter to the ‘hereafter.’ We cannot grasp that beyond the ‘end’ lies the beginning. Natural understanding will not conceive this. It can only conceive that beyond the end lies either nothing-ness or something entirely new. Beyond our life we meet — our life. We cannot turn in any other direction!” Plato did not believe that the dimension of time in which life occurred was absolutely apocatastatic or needed to be “traversed endlessly without change.” But to continue, ...“if the same time recurs and one reenters the same moment and changes something belonging to one’s former experience of that moment, must it not follow that one changes what has been done in the former experience of that moment, because the time is the same?”
Thus it is always the same life that we repeat, but it can be an eternal, self-polishing jewel or self-perfecting work of art. On the other hand, if we so choose, it can be no more than a dreary and monotonously unvarying routine.
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA — Greek philosopher and magician, credited with healing miracles, feats of bilocalism, raising of the dead, &c. An actual historical personage, who was the contemporary and rival of the merely legendary Jesus Christ. He is said to have observed, “Common men see the present, sages, that which is about to happen, the theoi see the future.”
APOPHIS — (“The Destroyer.”) Ancient “left-hand” adversary, Set. KG says he is Set in his “Ophidian” (serpent) form. A huge Nilotic serpent that attempted to devour Ra, he figures strongly in the left-hand path. Also “Apepi.”
APOPSI — Anti-psi power. Word invented by Bonewitz.
APORIA — The state of not knowing which way to turn. Philosophical doubt or confusion arising from the difficulty of reconciling contradictions or incomplete ideas. From Gk. aporos, “impassible, perplexing.”
APOTHEOSIS — Becoming a god, in the historical sense. Usually it referred to Roman emperors or Egyptian kings being given divine attributes, after they had died. In the superstitious or drugged mind, Ascension necessarily accompanies Apotheosis. That is, the spirit of the dead person, having been made into a god, is seen to rise literally into heaven. Initiates think of apotheosis as everyone’s task, while still alive: to achieve the literal transmogrification of the human condition.
APOTROPAIC
