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Archetype of the Apocalypse
Damn, this book is amazing and I’m only 13 pages into it. I don’t know what it is about Jungian psychology that turns me on so much, but when it’s good it’s so good. The book is called Archetype of the Apocalypse by Edward Edinger. It was originally recommended to me by Daniel Pinchbeck during an email exchange about the positive psychological function of the Apocalypse. And boy am I glad he recommended it to me.
Edinger’s essential concept is the the Apocalypse represents “the momentous event of the coming of the Self into conscious realization.” And if you think that sounds like Jungian psychobabble, then don’t worry, because I’ll be translating this into my own words and vision over the next few days. But I do sincerely recommend checking out the book if you’re interested at all in either the Apocalypse and what it “means” or Jung, or both.
Anyway, I’ll be writing more about this, but I thought I’d kickstart the whole thing with a typically excellent quote from page 13:
[…] Collective manifestations of the archetype are by definition unconscious manifestations of the archetype acted out concretely. When this archetype is experienced by the individual, however, it is not always by any means experienced in the form of a catastrophe. To be sure, the coming of the Self is always an upheaval; but this feature is often overshadowed by its positive consequence - the coming of an enlargement of the personality and the emerging relation to the transpersonal level of the psyche. Considering an individual’s experience of the archetype, the “Apocalypse” bodes catastrophe only for the stubbornly rationalistic, secular ego that refuses to grant the existence of a greater psychic authority than itself. Since it cannot bend, it has to break. Thus, “end of the world” dreams (invasion from outer space, nuclear bombs) do not necessarily presage psychic catastrophe for the dreamer but may, if properly understood, refer to the coming into visibility of manifestations of the Self - the nucleus of the psyche - and present the opportunity for an enlargement of the psyche.
This to me is absolutely fascinating, because it re-envisions the Apocalypse as almost a sacrament of personal transformation. It would also be a great way of understanding why we’ve suddenly seen such a huge increase in blogs and website about things like Peak Oil, and other end of the world predictions. It may (or may not) be literally true, but regardless it also seems to indicate that more and more people are coming into a personal relationship with the Apocalypse archetype, and consequently the Self.
With that in mind, I’d like to ask a question to readers. How, why and when did you first become interested in Apocalypse stuff? If it really is a trigger for encountering and uniting with the greater Self, what was going on in your life that may have precipated such a thing?
- Bring on the Apocalypse!
- Becoming an archetype
- A quote on archetypal possession
- (Post) Apocalypse
- Apocalypse As Endless Barbecue
- Prev: Manson vs. Jesus
- Next: Contained in the Myth
June 2nd, 2005 at 10:25 am
Hi Tim, great post (as well as the last few on the subject)!
First, I think it’s important to touch on the fact that the “Judgement” tarot refers literally to the Apocalypse, but metaphorically (and more importantly) to spiritual awakening. I always read the card as meaning the latter: either an awakening, a realization, or a call to “Wake Up!” (to use one of your least favorite phrases). To me, it never means catastrophe the way the “Tower” tarot does.
And the “Tower” leads me to my second comment. In answer to your question, I didn’t think much about apocalypse until 9/11. This sounds cliche, but it is true. Back then I wasn’t so interested in “prophecy” as much as a rational assessment of our global situation (weapons proliferation, dependence on oil, environmental degradation, etc.). But having studied some occult (mostly Tarot and Kabala) I was naturally interested in how our situation could be viewed from that angle, especially in light of the almost perfect literal rendition of the “Tower” trump manifesting on that day.
This winter I really picked up speed on my “research” because of a personal catastrophe which both kept me indoors much of the time and also caused me to re-think much of my life. (I’ve alluded to it in other posts here, no need to go into it in detail). I’m well aware that my interest in apocalypse has as much to do with my personal changes as it does with the global situation.
I do feel that something “big” is on its way. Not really a literal Apocalypse, but definitely a drastic change that will cause Westerners to re-assess where we are going collectively. The change will most likely be economic and may have something to do with the oil market.
– S
June 2nd, 2005 at 10:35 am
Sorry, but is this really news to you? Or possibly, you are misreading? The quote you give isn’t reflected in your first paragraph after the quote, The quote draws a distinction between *collective* and *personal* manifestations of the Apocalypse. And you say the huge increase in blogs about end of the world predictions, etc. is a personal manifestation - but to me this is obviously exactly what he is saying a collective manifestation IS. Personally I think it is actually an extremely elaborate marketing campaign for Speilberg’s War of the Worlds, but that is another story
The personal manifestation may be literal or figurative, But as the author says - collective manifestations … by definition … acted out **concretely**.
Obviously, it is possible that this current collective manifestion could be directly experienced by individuals on a personal level. But IMO that is speculating wildly. “… regardless it also seems to indicate that more and more people are coming into a personal relationship with the Apocalypse archetype, and consequently the Self.” You’re moving from a generalization to a specific - I’m not sure how you get from an “unconscious manifestation of the archetype acted out concretely” to this being a personal manifestation for any one …
Put another way - I can defintely understand personal transformation as “Apocalypse” (you familiar with Chapel Perilous?), but I have a hard time seeing Millenium Fever (however justified or not) as an instance of mass personal transformation.
Hang on - “This to me is absolutely fascinating, because it re-envisions the Apocalypse as almost a sacrament of personal transformation.” Weren’t you writing about Tarot cards like a month ago? Is this really NEWS to you? Exactly what kind of occult investigator are you, that this would be news? Signed, Confused
June 2nd, 2005 at 12:50 pm
yeah, geez tim, what are you, some kind of IDIOT???? this is all OLD NEWS!!!! get it TOGETHER, man! you know about TAROT cards, so SURELY you know about this stuff already! (sheesh)
come on, “questionanswers”– have some dignity.
ANYhow, i can totally see “millenium fever” as a crucible for mass personal transformation, even on the most basic level. even on the most basic level, it gets “masses” thinking about their place in more profound terms than ‘wake up, eat, go to work, eat, work, come home, eat, sleep,’ something most people don’t really do. look at y2k– even though nothing happened, a great number of people began to consider what would happen if it did; should they consider living better lives? should they throw it all away? or, as slomo pointed out, 9-11. if that wasn’t an amazing apocalyptic sacrament, i don’t know what was. i think it was moreso than y2k because of the imagery involved– it even looked and felt apocalyptic!
as to my own personal interest in the subject, i’d say the interest was always there but always as an internal event via years of studying it from the gnostic perspective, which has always held the apocalypse to be an eternal, mythic event instead of something literal.
my interest in the *actual* end of civilization is more recent, definitely; almost fully the fault of reading ran prieur concurrently with jacques ellul.
June 2nd, 2005 at 1:25 pm
“questionanswers”: don’t be a bitch to me for no reason. if you agree, then agree, if you dont then dont. if youre just trying to bust my balls for some stupid reason, im not particularly interested in it.
and to answer your question, no its not news to me. if you claim to have been following my site so closely for so long, you’d have been aware of the - i dont know - 25-50 other posts ive done about this very same topic. my excitement comes from it being so concisely and elegantly phrased by edinger. its helping me boost my understanding immensely.
and furthermore, how could you call THIS “wild speculation” after having read so much of my site otherwise. i mean, this compared to most of what i write is pretty much the opposite of speculative
anyway, ive personally always been fascinated with apocalyptic themed movies and stories, as long as i can remember. im not sure when it really reached a fever pitch. there were definitely stages. 9/11 was definitely a big one, but in the more recent past, i had a strange series of apocalyptic dreams, maybe starting six months ago that really pushed me over the edge so to speak
June 2nd, 2005 at 2:40 pm
Thanks for a fascinating blog Tim.I first came to these ideas through reading Terence McKenna and his Timewave Zero theory (but ‘The Invisible Landscape’ still has me beaten as far as the maths/science goes).I’m presently enjoying reading the conclusion of the ‘Promethea’ comic series by Alan Moore-treat yourself and give it a look!
June 2nd, 2005 at 2:50 pm
Personally these ideas came to me thru our little friends the mushrooms. Then I got hooked on the Revelation of John and the apocalypse genre in general. Perhaps McKenna did his part as well. But basically I’d say entheogens + the Bible.
June 2nd, 2005 at 2:57 pm
We all experienced the frightening, painful apocalypse of our birth after being lulled by the peace and contentment of our prenatal experience into believing that life is utopia. Our first two conscious imprints were (1) the oceanic bliss of utopia, followed abruptly by (2) the horror of apocalypse. Is it any wonder that human society bounces back and forth from abstractions of one to the other?
Utopia and apocalypse are not archetypes. They are real experiences. It’s just that for most of us they only happen once in our lives and dwell so far back in our memories that they seem like meta-dreams. As such they constitute a virtual meta-filter through which we filter our consciousness of all subsequent experience. Accordingly any suggestion of utopia or apocalypse gets us anticipating either the bliss of utopia or the anticipation of apocalypse. Prophets, priests, pundits, and politicians probably have no clue as to why it works, but they definitely know it works. Promise a typical human the utopia of heaven or world peace or of everybody thinking exactly like you or threaten him with the apocalypse of hell or all-out war or diversity of behaviors, opinions, and ideas, and you have him eating out of your hand.
Before we go speculating about some “greater psychic authority” let us not forget that each of us carries with us a vivid, valid predisposition to interpret our hopes and fears in terms of utopia and apocalypse based on actual, intimate, personal experience.
Let us also not forget that after our initial “archetypal” experiences of utopia and apocalypse most of us endure mundane lives void of utopian and apocalyptic experiences, which leaves us craving the variety and excitement that our meta-memories suggest to us experiences of utopia or apocalypse will provide. Moreover, our histories create highly compressed collective abstractions based on detailed descriptions of infrequent, short-lived apocalyptic events while utterly suppressing the overwhelming prevalence of centuries and millenia of essentially uneventful experience. We remember history as the time we almost got run over by a car while forgetting the countless times we crossed the same street in the same place without incident. Because that is how we remember history, it is also how we anticipate the future.
Certainly there may be a “greater psychic authority,” but even if there isn’t, we have plenty of common, ordinary, garden variety precedent for our “archetypal” inclinations.
June 2nd, 2005 at 8:33 pm
Edinger is great, he has always rendered Jungian psychology into lucid and accessible writing. Ego and Archetype is a classic.
I have to go with others in that sep11 is what triggered End of the World preoccupations for me. However, I don’t see it as political or economic conflict as much as a conflict between the secular and the sacred.
Also, being in Australia, I’ve long been interested in Aboriginal myths and especially Eliade on this. They had large meetings or corroborees in which they enacted the end of the world. Eliade was fascinated by their clear understanding that there would be renewal after the end. The end just wasn’t final.
Staying at the cultural level of this, there is no reason why we can’t “act out” the end of days in the same way the Aborigines did, literally through theatre. In modern times that includes the dance, ritual, mime, song, etc, the Aborigines used but also the movies and the internet. Even fairly naive speculations about the end of days is energy being poured into this archetype in a symbolic rather than literalist way.
It’s important to understand - and I know Tim has explained this again and again - that living symbols or archetypes are never fully explainable. They never mean just this or just that. You can never reach a full consciousness of them. You can only reach an acceptance that the experience is part-conscious (rational, secular, common sense) and part-unconscious (occult, mysterious, ineffable).
There will never come a day when Tim - or anyone else - will have exhausted this subject.
June 2nd, 2005 at 9:21 pm
thanks arizona. thats a great tip on the aboriginal stuff. ive been meaning to go back and tie in the whole dreamtime thing into this stuff as well. ive done it a little already, but plan on hitting it again, so that corroboree reference ought to be helpful.
ive also just been thinking a lot about how we dont need to physically live through the apocalypse, as you said. since its a psychological event, we can deal with it ritually and psychically. im gonna write more about that if anybody has any more good links or references
June 3rd, 2005 at 12:05 am
My 100% mea culpa - I really need to learn to write anything first thing after I roll out of bed. I completely take back the “what kind of…” I really didn’t mean any of that to sound bitchy/attacky/whatever. I really was just asking - I just don’t have the best interpersonal skills (and doubly so 1st thing in the morn). I didn’t even read what anybody said above, I realized what I wrote sounded like 15 minutes later while I was driving to work, felt bad about it all day, and just got home to post this. I’ll go up read everybody chewing me out now & feel even worse. Again, I feel real bad about this - I hope you can separate what I *meant* from how it sounded.
June 3rd, 2005 at 12:18 am
I feel like cr*p (please don’t say “good”) - I promise that I really just found your blog not very long ago & haven’t read that much - I also promise that I was really just very confused about what was going on here & expressing my opinion on the apocalypse archetype, not trying to bust anybody’s balls - And finally I promise to think at LEAST twice before hitting Submit.
June 3rd, 2005 at 12:31 am
dont worry about it. happens to the best of us. the only difference between me and you is i can go back and edit stuff after hitting submit
June 3rd, 2005 at 12:39 am
Tim - thank you: you are a gentleman.
June 3rd, 2005 at 2:27 am
I’ve just been reading Annemarie Schimmel’s “ISLAM” at Questia.com. She relates how Mohammad first received his visions at age 40. This is the classic Jungian midlife crisis age. His first visions were apocalyptic as described in the opening of Sura 81:
When the sun shall be darkened,
when the stars shall be thrown down,
when the mountains shall be set moving,
when the pregnant camels shall be neglected,
when the savage beasts shall be mustered,
when the seas shall be set boiling,
when the souls shall be coupled,
when the buried infant shall be asked for what sin she
was slain,
when the scrolls shall be unrolled,
when heaven shall be stripped off,
when Hell shall be set blazing,
when Paradise shall be brought nigh,
then shall a soul know what it has produced.
(translated by A. J. Arberry)
source: page 12 of the online book
Imagine: it was a vision of the end of days that started Islam off in the first place.
This just seems weird in connection to sep11 and the whole “staged” aspect of it, as if we’ve been subjected - at a cultural or group level - to Muhammad’s original vision.
June 3rd, 2005 at 11:44 am
wow thats a fantastic lead, thanks so much arizona!
September 4th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
[…] My recent off-the-cuff denouncing of apocalyptic fantasies has yielded a bumper crop of people arguing against me. In effect, arguing for the Apocalypse. Why? What does this mean that this story has become so powerful that people simply don’t want to let it go? […]