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Apocalypse

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We are heading for a radical revision where you could say we are heading towards the end of the world, but more in the R.E.M. (rock group) sense than the Revelation sense. That is what apocalypse means – revelation... a new way of looking at things...that completely radicalises our notions of the where we were, when we were, what we were... ~ Alan Moore

Apocalypse (ἀποκάλυψις) is a Greek word meaning "revelation", "an unveiling or unfolding of things not previously known and which could not be known apart from the unveiling". As a Christian genre, apocalyptic literature details the authors' visions of the end times.

Quotes

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Only Nietzsche and Blake know a wholly fallen Godhead, a Godhead which is an absolutely alien Nihil, but the full reversal of that Nihil is apocalypse itself, an apocalypse which is an absolute joy, and Blake and Nietzsche are those very writers who have most evoked that joy. ~ Thomas J. J. Altizer
Sorted alphabetically by author or source
If we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. ~ G. K. Chesterton
"Listen," croaked Skuzz. "Got something important to tell you. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse … they're right bastards, all four of them." ~ Good Omens
Wild, dark times are rumbling toward us, and the prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will have to invent entirely new beasts, and beasts so terrible that the ancient animal symbols of St. John will seem like cooing doves and cupids in comparison. ~ Heinrich Heine
People still do not appear to know... the beast from the Apocalypse refers to none other than the Caesar, Nero. Only the later Christian church, in the time of Constantine (325 AD), put the Apocalypse into a future, historical time-frame. ~Prof. G. Quispel
  • What is most needed today is a fundamental theological thinking, one centered upon the Godhead itself, and centered upon that which is most challenging or most offensive in the Godhead, one which has truly been veiled in the modern world, except by our most revolutionary thinkers and visionaries. If we allow Blake and Nietzsche to be paradigmatic of those revolutionaries, nowhere else does such a centering upon God or the Godhead occur, although a full parallel to this occurs in Spinoza and Hegel; but the language of Hegel and Spinoza is not actually offensive, or not in its immediate impact, whereas the language of Nietzsche and Blake is the most purely offensive language which has ever been inscribed. Above all this is true of the theological language of Blake and Nietzsche, but here a theological language is a truly universal language, one occurring in every domain, and occurring as that absolute No which is the origin of every repression and every darkness, and a darkness which is finally the darkness of God, or the darkness of that Godhead which is beyond “God.” Only Nietzsche and Blake know a wholly fallen Godhead, a Godhead which is an absolutely alien Nihil, but the full reversal of that Nihil is apocalypse itself, an apocalypse which is an absolute joy, and Blake and Nietzsche are those very writers who have most evoked that joy.
  • “You frighten me, when you say there isn't time."
    "I don't see why. Christians have been expecting the imminent end of the world for millennia."
    "But it keeps not ending."
    "So far, so good.”
  • "The Man Comes Around" is a song that I wrote, it's my song of the apocalypse, and I got the idea from a dream that I had — I dreamed I saw Queen Elizabeth. I dreamed I went in to Buckingham Palace, and there she sat on the floor. And she looked up at me and said, "Johnny Cash, you're like a thorn tree in a whirlwind." And I woke up, of course, and I thought, what could a dream like this mean? Thorn tree in a whirlwind? Well, I forgot about it for two or three years, but it kept haunting me, this dream. I kept thinking about it, how vivid it was, and then I thought, Maybe it's biblical. So I found it. Something about whirlwinds and thorn trees in the Bible. So from that, my song started and... "The Man Comes Around." The song turned out to be "The Man Comes Around."
  • There is always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything. Similarly, we have the sentiment that if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. This is the great truth which has always lain at the back of baby-worship, and which will support it to the end.
  • The apocalypse is the way the world looks after the ego has disappeared.
    • Northrop Frye The Great Code: The Bible and Literature, Chapter 5, Typology II: Phases of Revelation p. 158
  • As for apocalypse, I was imprinted at an early age with the idea of The End of the World (this also courtesy of the Catholic Church). I can remember being terrified of thunderstorms — I'd think, Uh oh, THIS IS IT. I was born in 1957, and grew up in the metropolitan New York area with the Cold War as a backdrop. In kindergarten and first and second grade we had constant air raid drills, sirens going off and that whole "Duck 'n Cover" drill when you cower under your desk or else hide in the classroom cloak closet, waiting for the Atomic Bomb to drop. I had nightmares about that well into my twenties.
  • Wild, dark times are rumbling toward us, and the prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will have to invent entirely new beasts, and beasts so terrible that the ancient animal symbols of St. John will seem like cooing doves and cupids in comparison.
    • Heinrich Heine, in Lutetia; or, Paris. From the Augsberg Gazette, 12, VII (1842)
  • And along with indifference to space, there was an even more complete indifference to time.
    "There seems to be plenty of it", was all I would answer when the investigator asked me to say what I felt about time.
    Plenty of it, but exactly how much was entirely irrelevant. I could, of course, have looked at my watch but my watch I knew was in another universe. My actual experience had been, was still, of an indefinite duration. Or alternatively, of a perpetual present made up of one continually changing apocalypse.
  • Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. We can now revise that and witness the attempt to imagine capitalism by way of imagining the end of the world.
  • To me, when we talk about the world, we are talking about our ideas of the world. Our ideas of organisation, our different religions, our different economic systems, our ideas about it are the world. We are heading for a radical revision where you could say we are heading towards the end of the world, but more in the R.E.M. sense than the Revelation sense. That is what apocalypse means – revelation. I could square that with the end of the world, a revelation, a new way of looking at things, something that completely radicalises our notions of the where we were, when we were, what we were, something like that would constitute an end to the world in the kind of abstract – yet very real sense – that I am talking about. A change in the language, a change in the thinking, a change in the music. It wouldn’t take much – one big scientific idea, or artistic idea, one good book, one good painting – who knows – we are at a critical point where the ideas are coming thicker and faster and stranger and stranger than they ever were before. They are realised at a greater speed, everything has become very fluid.
  • His favorite apocalypse was a tide of McLitter, a thousand channels of television noise, a complete scrambling of politics and entertainment, proud-to-be-a-breadhead buttons, bright packaging around tasteless and nutrition-free product, audiovisual media devoid of anything approaching meaning, bellies swelling and IQs atrophying. In his preferred world, as in the songs, people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made, worked for Matthew and Son, were dedicated follower of fashion, and did what Simon said.
  • The year 1999, seventh month, [or simply "sept"] From the sky will come a great King of Terror. To bring back to life the great King of the Mongols, Before and after Mars to reign by good luck.
  • There are Seven Seals to be opened, that is to say, Seven mysteries to know, and Seven difficulties to overcome, Seven trumpets to sound, and Seven cups to empty.
    The Apocalypse is, to those who receive the nineteenth degree, the Apotheosis of that Sublime Faith which aspires to God alone, and despises all the pomps and works of Lucifer. Lucifer, the Light-bearer! Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit of Darkness! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! Is it he who bears the Light, and with its splendors intolerable blinds feeble, sensual, or selfish Souls! Doubt it not! for traditions are full of Divine Revelations and Inspirations: and Inspiration is not of one Age nor of one Creed. Plato and Philo, also, were inspired.
    • Albert Pike, in Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. XIX : Grand Pontiff, p. 321
  • Just what is the meaning of the four beasts — the man, the lion, the bull, and the eagle — whether in the Christian Book of the Apocalypse or as used by early and medieval Christian artists? The question is not hard to answer. In the first place the Christian Book of Revelation was written by a Qabbalist, a student of the early, not the late, Qabbalah. It was edited or touched up at a later date by a later Christian editor. No one knows what he took out, what he kept in. But it was touched up and given a more Christian coloring...
  • Chapter four of this Christian book called Revelation or the Apocalypse... mentions these four beasts "full of eyes within," who proclaimed truths and unsealed seals, and they are stated to have encompassed the throne of the Hierarch. Whether through this Qabbalistic book, or by early tradition now forgotten, or in some other way at present unknown to scholars, possibly through neo-Platonic sources, or neo-Pythagoric, the early Christians ascribed the same meaning to these four 'beasts' of the Apocalypse, and to the writers of the four Gospels, to wit, the man, the lion, the bull, and the eagle, that the Hindus ascribed to what they called their four Loka-palas, or guardians of the worlds, the four Maharajas if you like; albeit in simple justice be it said, the Hindu conception even today is incomparably vaster and more spiritually mystical than is the strongly anthropomorphic picture presented in the Christian book of Revelation.
  • Let us pardon him his hope of a vain apocalypse, and of a second coming in great triumph upon the clouds of heaven. Perhaps these were the errors of others rather than his own; and if it be true that he himself shared the general illusion, what matters it, since his dream rendered him strong against death, and sustained him in a struggle to which he might otherwise have been unequal?
    • Ernest Renan. Vie de Jésus (The Life of Jesus) Ch. 17 (1863)
  • Christians, and some Jews, claim we're in the "end times," but they've been saying this off and on for more than two thousand years. According to Hindu cosmology, we're in the Kali Yuga, a dark period when the cow of history is balanced precariously on one leg, soon to topple. Then there are our new-age friends who believe that this December we're in for a global cage-rattling which, once the dust has settled, will usher in a great spiritual awakening.
    Most of this apocalyptic noise appears to be just wishful thinking on the part of people who find life too messy and uncertain for comfort, let alone for serenity and mirth. The truth, from my perspective, is that the world, indeed, is ending  –  and is also being reborn. It's been doing that all day, every day, forever. Each time we exhale, the world ends; when we inhale, there can be, if we allow it, rebirth and spiritual renewal. It all transpires inside of us. In our consciousness, in our hearts. All the time.
    Otherwise, ours is an old, old story with an interesting new wrinkle. Throughout most of our history, nothing  –  not flood, famine, plague, or new weapons  –  has endangered humanity one-tenth as much as the narcissistic ego, with its self-aggrandizing presumptions and its hell-hound spawn of fear and greed. The new wrinkle is that escalating advances in technology are nourishing the narcissistic ego the way chicken manure nourishes a rose bush, while exploding worldwide population is allowing its effects to multiply geometrically. Here's an idea: let's get over ourselves, buy a cherry pie, and go fall in love with life.
The New Epoch must manifest due respect to the Mother of the World, to the Feminine Element. “The bird of the spirit of Humanity cannot fly with only one wing” —these are words of Vivekananda... woman, fighting for her cosmic rights, will acquire the knowledge of her power. ~ Helena Roerich
  • The great decisive Battle between the Forces of Light and darkness. It was predicted in all the ancient scriptures, and the name, "Armageddon" as well as the description of it, can be found in the Apocalypse....It is interesting to note that these calculations are also found in the pyramid of Cheops. Thus, today we find ourselves in the midst of this Battle, which will increase. This Battle is still more fearful in the Subtle World, but eventually its reflections will be intensified on the earthly plane... As it is said, "The hostile elements of the race refuse to submit to destiny. The departing race seeks to destroy the chosen successors, but we must save them. Destiny may be eased and the Battle ended sooner."...
    Yes, the New Epoch requires spiritual cognition. The New Epoch must manifest due respect to the Mother of the World, to the Feminine Element. “The bird of the spirit of Humanity cannot fly with only one wing” —these are words of Vivekananda, who meant to affirm the great significance of the Feminine Principle. Man does not willingly give full rights to woman. However, this opposition but intensifies the forces; and woman, fighting for her cosmic rights, will acquire the knowledge of her power. (LHR I, p 325) (10 September 1934)
  • The predicted great Armageddon of our race is in full swing... victory is always with the forces of Light, but dreadful cataclysms are unavoidable... the destiny of the world is in the hands of humanity. The planet can be saved only if there is a resurrection of the spirit, only if the consciousness is liberated from the phantoms of the past and directed toward the construction of the New World on the basis of a new understanding of cooperation and knowledge. (16 July 1935) ...At present the whole world is passing through thrice difficult days, and it was indicated to read in the Apocalypse the first verse, chapter 21—"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth" so it is, and with the old consciousness one cannot enter the New World. (11 February 1938)
  • I myself once heard intelligent people trying to prove that the Bolsheviks were predicted in the Apocalypse, and that even the number of the days of their power was mentioned, and that the Michael mentioned there was none other than the Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich! I certainly do not mention this to discredit Bajenov's book, but simply to warn those who are greatly attracted by research into Biblical prophecies. (22 June 1936)
  • The Last Judgement is generally thought of as a procedure undertaken by God. Actually it will be undertaken by man, with my help. It is a Final Healing, rather than a meting out of punishment, however much man may think that punishment is deserved. Punishment is a concept in total opposition to right-mindedness. The aim of the Last Judgement is to restore right-mindedness to man.
    The Last Judgement might be called a process of right evaluation. It simply means that finally all men will come to understand what is worthy and what is not. After this, their ability to choose can be directed reasonably. Until this distinction is made, however, the vacillations between free and imprisoned will cannot but continue. The first step toward freedom must entail a sorting out of the false from the true. This is a process of division only in the constructive sense, and reflects the true meaning of the Apocalypse. Man will ultimately look upon his own creations and will to preserve only what is good, just as God Himself looked upon what He had created and knew that it was good.
    The term “Last Judgement” is frightening not only because it has been falsely projected onto God, but also because of the association of “last” with death. This is an outstanding example of upside-down perception. Actually, if the meaning of the Last Judgement is objectively examined, it is quite apparent that it is really the doorway to life p. 43
  • The inspiration for the title of this book came from a Bible prophecy that seems more applicable now than at any other time in human history. It occurs in both the Old and the New Testament and speaks of the collapse of the existing world order and the arising of a new heaven and a new earth. We need to understand here that heaven is not a location but refers to the inner realm of consciousness. This is the esoteric meaning of the word, and this is also its meaning in the teachings of Jesus. Collective human consciousness and life on our planet are intrinsically connected. “A new heaven” is the emergence of a transformed state of human consciousness, and “a new earth” is its reflection in the physical realm.
  • The unfettered clouds and region of the heavens,
    Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light—
    Were all like workings of one mind, the features
    Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree,
    Characters of the great Apocalypse,
    The types and symbols of Eternity,
    Of first and last, and midst, and without end.
  • The Lambes uyves in blysse we bene,
    A hondred and forty thowsande flot
    As in the Apocalyppes hit is sene.
    Sant John hem syy al in a knot
    On the hyl of Syon, that semly clot;
    The apostel hem segh in gostly drem,
    Arayed to the weddyng in that hyl-coppe,
    The nwe cyté o Jerusalem.
    • Anonymous, Perle, 14
      Sarah Stanbury, ed. Pearl. Medieval Institute Publications, 2001
  • Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
    You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
    Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!
    You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
    Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
    Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
    Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
    Crack nature's moulds, an germens spill at once,
    That make ingrateful man!
  • Some say the world will end in fire,
      Some say in ice.
    From what I’ve tasted of desire
    I hold with those who favor fire.
      But if it had to perish twice,
    I think I know enough of hate
      To know that for destruction ice
    Is also great
      And would suffice.
    • Robert Frost, "Fire and Ice",
      Harper's Magazine (December 1923)

Bible

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  • His feet were like fine copper when glowing in a furnace; and his voice was as the sound of many waters.
  • And I heard the number of them which were sealed: and there were sealed an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel.
    • 7: 4, King James Version
  • It has been granted to her to be clothed with bright, clean, fine linen—for the fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the holy ones.
  • At your mouth, white and milk-warm sphinx,
    I taste a strange apocalypse:

See also

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Wikipedia
Wikipedia
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Wiktionary
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