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17 Oct 2006 @ 02:40, by Craig Lang
I was struck yesterday, by the way things seem to fit together - for better or for worse. I had an interesting thread of synchronicities over the weekend, involving dreams, a Minnesota Orchestra concert, and an earthquake in Hawaii.
On Friday evening, we went to see the Lord of the Rings Symphony, put on by the Minnesota Orchestra. It was a eerilly haunting overture, a combined instrumental and choral arrangement of the musical score of the movie, Lord of the Rings. It caught the sense of mystery and fantasy behind the books and movies. To me, it captured the essence of the books, and it made my scalp tingle.
During the performance, I found myself thinking back to some of the impressions I had gotten as I read the books many years ago - and more recently, saw the movies. The greatest was the sense of an undercurrent of meaning to the events of history. The complexity of the music seemed to suggest the intricate interweaving threads of events that make up history. Are they now, as portrayed by J.R.R. Tolkien, leading to the end of the age?
When we got home, I looked up a webste I had read a year or two earlier, Tolkien at the End of Time. In this article, Jay Weidner and Sharron Rose describe how Tolkien appears to have captured the transition from what they say was the third or "Bronze" age, to the fourth or "Iron" age. It is a time of transition from an age of magic to an age of technology - from the age of elves to the age of men. It is the ultimate shift from spirituality to concreteness - when mankind became fully separated from godhood.
Rose and Weidner propose that this is - at least metaphorically - a tale of the start of the present age. They argue that it is the beginning of the technological realm that we now call "history." They state that this would have been approximately 6,500 years ago - at least - at the dawn of history (CL Note: my guess is that it would be at least 10 to 12 thousand years ago, at the end of the previous ice age). They describe how this is the transition to the present era of technology, war and power.
Rose and Weidner describe various mystical traditions, especially alchemical lore, astrology, the Mayan calendar, the book of Revelation, and the Great Cross at Hendaye, France (which they describe as depicting a vast array of alchemical knowledge). The ancient adepts discerned trends and cycles in the physical, spiritual and religio-political worlds, which seemed to correlate with these themes. From this, they described the four ages of the historical cycle - the golden, silver, bronze and iron ages.
The ultimate conclusion of Rose and Weidner is that, while Tolkien describes the transition from the Bronze to the Iron age, we are now at the conclusion of the Iron age, and thus of the complete cycle of history. Thus, we are about to transition from the age of Iron to the next Golden age. A complete renewal of spirit and the beginning of the next cycle of history.
I was struck, also, by how the transition of ages seems to be characterized by climactic struggle between the forces of good and evil - in whatever manifestation they appear at that moment in history. In the case of Tolkien's books, this is the struggle between the evil forces of Sauron and those of the human/elven world of Middle Earth. In other popular SCi Fi epics of the present-day world, such as Babylon 5 and Star Wars, the same themes appear - the grand struggle against a menacing evil and an intricate weave of the threads of events. These form a tapestry of conflict that ultimately brings about transition from one age to the next.
So I wondered, as I was sitting in the concert hall, are we presently in such a scenario? Do we see the impending climactic conflict that will bring us from the Iron age to the Golden age? Is this the time indicated in prophecy as the close of the age? I thought about events in my own life, the feeling of being on a misison - and the sense that each of us has our own missions in life, our own life purpose to fulfill. I wondered, do these also interweave in a similar way, into an epic saga of the end of the age?
I thought about the description in the Bible, in the book/chapter of Matthew 24: "You will hear of wars and rumors of wars" and "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places."
That night I remember having an indistinct nightmare. I dreamed that something was amiss. The next morning, I awoke with the sense of things being wrong. I felt that everything was somehow "off." I gave a talk that afternoon at Minnesota MUFON, which seemed to go well. Yet somehow it seemed to miss the mark. I decided that I needed to make some changes to the PowerPoint slides, to improve the flow of the talk. In my mind, that fixed the immediate issue. Yet there was the sense that something was wrong. This was the feeling that I had as I went to bed that evening - the same one that I had at the time of the Indonesian Tsunami, and the night of 9/10/2001. Something was amiss.
In the morning, I awoke feeling refreshed. We went to church, then did the usual Sunday afternoon stuff - mostly family leisure day-off type stuff...
That afternoon, as I was sitting in the den with my laptop, doing some writing, Gwyn's sister suddenly called with the news of the big earthquake in Hawaii. The phrase, "earthquakes in various places" suddenly came to mind - in richter scale force...
I again wondered whether we are indeed seeing an increase in earthqauakes, storms, droughts, etc? The earth is at carrying capacity - and with any shift in climate, it looks like famine might be imminent. Is this the time indicated in Matthew 24? Is this the time of the apocalypse? Are we approaching the fabled changes of 2012? The questions mount in my heart and mind.
Then I recalled the final passage in the paragraph, "All these are the beginning of birth pains." To me this measn that there will be alot more "excitement" to go before the transition is complete. It's still a long way to 2012. But the phrase "birth pangs" also suggests that it is the sign of a birth - the coming of a new world - the shift from the Iron to the Golden age...
I am struck by the currents of history, of prophecy and of the tapestry of events. They remind me so much of the threads of meaning interwoven in literary epics such as Lord of the Rings. I continue to notice the present-day interweave of politics and religion with natural events such as earthquakes and storms - and with the decline of the environment. Ultimately, I wonder: are they, indeed, building toward climactic events in 2012?
Is this the conjoining of so many threads of prophecy - Revelation, Nostradamus, Hopi, Mayan, Alchemical, and so many more...? Are these the birth pangs? Dreams and earthquakes, wars and rumors of wars - are these indeed the early movements in a climactic symphony of change?
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Category: Articles
3 comments
18 Oct 2006 @ 17:34 by Hanae @69.33.46.10 : From LOTR to STNG
I like the kind of fiction such as Fantasy and SF manifest because of the freedom with which they play around with social constructs---by extension they help remind us that the world we live in, the world our "civilization" has created for itself, is also that, and only just that: a social construct. Nothing is carved in stone and nothing has to be the way it is.
As such, Star Trek the Next Generation (STNG), just as LOTR (but for different reasons), has always been endearing to me because of its attempts to depict Gene Roddenberry's vision of a future in which the human race has done away with racism, sexism, prejudice, religion, greed, and poverty.
While typically with the turn of the new millennium, dire prophecies of an end-of-times have been revived (as the coming of Armageddon, to some, or, to others, as the dying of a civilization to be soon replaced with a new golden age---it's all a matter of interpretation and a question of where one's upbringing, fear and hopes lay in the matter), many were also hoping that with the turn to the twenty first century, and in view of the clear and present rising social and ecological emergencies threatening humanity at large and countless species on the planet along with it, the world would experience some kind of a new awakening. Voices, already, were talking of "a bridge" to a better world within our grasp. Humanity already has the means and the know-how. Surely a new collective wisdom was to emerge---is to emerge if humanity is to survive---new voices would be heard both in a grass root way, from the bottom up, and from inspirational leaders, form the top down.
Whatever happened? Or whatever didn't happen?
Or as my good friend Tom Bombadil put it: {link:http://tom-bombadil.blogspot.com/2005/07/whatever-happened-to-bridge-to-21st.html|Whatever happened to the bridge to the 21st century?}
Just like Guinean, a character of STNG, in an episode about parallel time-lines ("Yesterday Enterprise"), Tom feels something is out of place and that the Enterprise is not where it's supposed to be, not doing what it is the Enterprise is about or what it was meant to be doing. Things don't feel "right" to him. Things are "not the way they're supposed to be." The bridge, the crew's uniforms, their attitudes...
19 Oct 2006 @ 15:42 by : Interesting view...
Hi Hanae,
Thanks for the comment.
I love the series STNG, and especially the episode, "Yesterday's Enterprise."
Its interesting to watch how the Star Trek universe changed once Gener Rodenberry passed away. He died during the TNG series, and IMHO, it reflects in the transition from the early to the later shows - although don't ask me why, the later shows just feel wrong... :-)
Interesting comment about "the bridge to the 21st century." I don't remember that exact quote - was it in LOTR? but I love the idea that "the present time is wrong." IMHO the idea that we can change the future by changing the present gives me a lot of hope.
Thanx again for an interesting comment.
27 Nov 2006 @ 20:01 by : Intent...
Think outside the prison.
The War on Freedom.
Carpe Libertatem!
The Fourier Trance-formations begin!
Just poppin ya up top the top, mate...
Other entries in Articles
10 May 2009 @ 23:02: Stars in our eyes? More on the question: 'Are we ready for the Cosmos?'
3 Feb 2006 @ 17:18: More spooky 9/11 stuff
24 Oct 2005 @ 20:57: The Republic of Vermont?
18 Jul 2005 @ 17:15: Seth Shostak's Glass House
16 Mar 2005 @ 22:10: Whitley on Armegeddon '2005, The Year of the Death Wish'
23 Feb 2005 @ 17:11: More by Richard Dolan
21 Jan 2005 @ 18:24: Controlling the Anger
30 Dec 2004 @ 16:39: 'Earthquakes in various places'
25 Oct 2004 @ 17:16: A Million Questions in the Eye of God
19 Sep 2004 @ 00:39: Sky Captain
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