Theos-Talk Archives (June 1998 Message tt00240)

On the lighter side of this gloomy topic, check out:
http://www.teleport.com/~nenslo/tape.html
and
http://www.teleport.com/~nenslo/rapture.html

Nice images related to this thread.  I chalk up our collective interest in
the end-of-it-all as a jungian desire to embrace our darker fears and
thereby disarm them.  Since we've managed to come through the transit of
Pluto in Scorpio all in one piece, I have trouble buying much of the
millenium panic (except for computer systems, of course)

Pam
pgiese@snd.softfarm.com

"Blessed are the cracked, for they shall let in the light..."

----------
> From: "K Paul Johnson" <pjohnson@leo.vsla.edu>
> Subject: Doomsday
> Date: Thursday, June 11, 1998 6:13 PM
>
> In response to Kym's and others' remarks about expectations of
> apocalypse, I suggest that there are powerful archetypes in the
> collective unconscious that easily take possession of people in
> certain circumstances.  I just read a marvellously funny and
> intelligent novel, Imaginary Friends by Alison Lurie, just
> reprinted in paperback.  Originally published in 1967, it seems
> very contemporary.  It's about two sociologists who infiltrate a
> UFO cult in the name of science, but end up getting sucked into
> the phenomenon they're supposed to be studying.  After they join
> the group incognito, its teenage prophetess Verena, who channels Ro of
> the planet Varga, announces that the Vargans are coming to earth
> to transform civilization.
>
> Why is it that prophet after prophet feels compelled to predict
> some catastrophic or at least intensely dramatic "end times"
> scenario, despite the fact that every previous one has been
> totally wrong?  Wouldn't you think they'd learn from past
> mistakes?  Re: my own research, I can't help wondering why Edgar
> Cayce, normally someone who gave very sound therapeutic and
> spiritual advice to people, occasionally lapsed into
> cataclysm-mongering.  I lean toward concluding that he was simply
> channeling material that wells up in many people under the right
> circumstances.  Nostradamus, for example, had many catastrophic visions.

>
> Deep down, we all know we're going to die.  But we repress that
> knowledge, keep it out of consciousness.  We also know that this
> planet and everything on it will be destroyed someday; another
> thing we avoid thinking about.  Perhaps 6 billion people
> desperately avoiding the thought of their own death, or that of
> their planet, forces so much death-anxiety into the
> unconscious that it has to well up through archetypal images of
> massive destruction.
>
> But what's hardest to understand is the joy that some people seem
> to take in imagining huge-scale catastrophes befalling humanity.
> You get the impression that such folks, some of them Cayceans,
> will actually be disappointed if California never slides under
> the sea, or atomic war never kills millions of people, or
> whatever other predicted catastrophes don't get fulfilled.
> Indeed, sometimes I feel alone in discussions with Cayce people
> when I say "I certainly hope this is wrong!"  Like they would
> rather have Cayce proved right than spare millions of lives.
> (Note that the ARE leadership has been quite lowkey about the
> dramatic predictions, and acts as if it expects nonfulfillment,
> however.)
>
> Comments?
>
>