Ok, rant time, as this has come up a lot for me lately.
I'm so through with End Times prophesies. I grew up with them, I spent years in constant fear of Y2K, and devoted entirely too much of my attention to them in the past. I'm done with them.
Prophesy is a subtle and dangerous yet powerful form of magick, a means of social control for centuries to come. Just as the church is a form of control over the people through the formation of a state, so too does prophesy solidify this control, and justify the continuance of the state which supports it. Religions are states. Prophesy enables the state through justification and promise of what is to come. Men fulfill the prophesy in hopes of giving it more power. It comes to pass ultimately because we cause it to come to pass. Or it does not when we refuse to participate in it. The choice remains ours.
I have studied many prophesies, and they all speak of the same things. Times of change will occur, and there will be unrest. This is always true, for there is ever change and change ever comes with trouble and unrest from those who resist it. The specifics vary, but this remains consistent. Men fear the future and what it may bring, for they know that the world of today will one day pass to the world of tomorrow, just as we pass from life to life.
The other major theme is a closure, a final judgement. Men can not grasp the concept of an eternal and unending universe, for our lives are not unending. So, as below so above, we see our own deaths in the ending of the universe, justifying the unacceptable loss of our own selves to time.
We do not wish to accept death. It seems unfair that this existance should be followed by oblivion. So we make for ourselves dreams of a world to follow in order to accept this thing which we can not understand nor prevent. And in passing ourselves, the world too must pass, so we tell of the time this will occur. But the world does not pass, only the states we build within it. The world moves on, and new cultures rise and tell of the time their gods will destroy them too. And men hide from life and give their will to others in the promise of reward following death.
I reject this thinking. I reject the politics of death, the religions of death, the basis of death in all our works. I live, and I choose life. I do not wait in hopes of a deux ex machina to set the world right with a single
glorious stroke. I understand that this is given to us to manifest, and work toward that end. I live and work to improve this life. I do not forsake the sacred gift of life given to me in order to submit to a state of control which promises me rewards after death for my service to that state in life. I reject this machine of control over the mind and spirit of men in all its forms. If there is to be a Final Battle, my side in it is in seeing that this battle never happens at all.
The world ends every day, and begins again upon the next. Get over it. Stop feeding the prophesies. They are magick that is set to doom us. There is no end, no death, only change. |
