It wouldn't be an archetype, I don't think, exactly -- but since Freud's later writings dealth with the war between eros/libido (life force) and thanatos/destrudo (urge to death), I'd be surprised if Jung didn't deal with that at all.
In Hinduism, you've got the yugas -- I think these first show up in writing in the Vishnu Purana, but the idea's probably older than that text. Yugas are cycles of creation & destruction -- essentially circular, but with a beginning and ending built in, separated by some kind of division. To answer the question posed in the topic abstract, they're probably not "just the death of the individual magnified to a social group level," because they're so darn cosmic, for one thing, but also seem intimately involved with declining morals and general dwindling of kindness. They do seem to follow a similar kind of structure, but in a more complicated way.
There's a pretty well-defined Zoroastrian apocalypse, in which the world is purified by fire. Wikipedia's "eschatology" article says the Zoroastrian last days were "clarified" (which I think means "written down") by 500 B.C. It also describes Native American prophecies, Buddhist end times beliefs and links out to a passel of fun.
But more recently, in Judeo-Christianity, the foundation of the state of Israel was kind of a big deal, in that it seems to fulfill some apocalyptic prophecies involving things like the rebuilding of the Temple and that. So there's been a resurgence of interest in that approach -- the literal fulfillment of prophecy -- to scriptural descriptions of Last Days. |
