2008-12-11 1

Millennialism throughout History

It’s Good to be CatholicCCRC

©2008 Benjamin Espen

2008-12-11 2

A Brief Review

Blake’s Great Red Dragon

2008-12-11 3

What is the Millennium? The Olivet Discourse (Mt 24, Mk 13, Lk 21) Revelations, Ch. 20

2008-12-11 4

Key Terms Apocalypse The Millennium Millenarian Millennialism Pre-millennialism Post-millennialism Amillennialism (antimillennialism) Rapture Tribulation Dispensation Preterism

2008-12-11 5

Now for something completely different Belief in the Millennium is very common People act on their beliefs I’m interested in this primarily because it

helps me to understand what people do, but it isn’t often discussed

2008-12-11 6

Now for something completely awful If you dislike algebra, now is the time to

refresh your beverage…

2008-12-11 7

The Structure of the Millennium The point of all that mess is to explicate

something very simple Aristotle noted that most stories have a

beginning, a middle, and an end (Poetics Bk 1, Ch 7)

The Millennium, and indeed all of history, is in part a story we tell ourselves

2008-12-11 8

The Structure of the Millennium

CIR + t1h + p/f/t2 + (!1/o/!2/0)(S/s)

2008-12-11 9

Genesis ‘CIR’ stands for Creation-Incubation-

Release Creation is obvious Incubation is the Garden of Eden Release is Original Sin

2008-12-11 10

The Structure of the Millennium

CIR + t1h + p/f/t2 + (!1/o/!2/0)(S/s)

2008-12-11 11

Transition t1h The next element in the paradigm, ‘t1’,

represents “normal time” in a story h represents a person who represents a

great finale of normalcy, the Great Conservative

2008-12-11 12

Transition p/f/t2 p is a time of false hope, The Emperor of

Last Days. f is when the lunatics have taken over the

asylum. This is the time of the Antichrist The element ‘t2’ is the most discussed of

all the paradigmatic elements. It is the End Times, the Last Days, the Final Crisis and similar periods of apocalyptic expectation

2008-12-11 13

The Structure of the Millennium

CIR + t1h + p/f/t2 + (!1/o/!2/0)(S/s)

2008-12-11 14

The End ‘!1/o/!2/0’. This is the end of history—a

whole genus of functionally equivalent ideas.

There are two types of apocalypse (‘!1’ and ‘!2’) and two types of post-historical time (‘o’ and ‘0’). As to the notion of “apocalypse,” please note that I use the term rather loosely. Literally, it means “disclosure” or “revelation,” particularly of the circumstances attending the end of the world

2008-12-11 15

Unity o is the Millennium, a pause before the

true end Millennia show up everywhere, from the

‘Winter’ of Spengler to Mad Max 0 represents eternity

2008-12-11 16

The Structure of the Millennium

CIR + t1h + p/f/t2 + (!1/o/!2/0)(S/s)

2008-12-11 17

Linearity and Cyclicity ‘S/s’, which deals with the question of linearity

and cyclicity. ‘S’ stands for the great cyclicity, the belief that the world repeats itself in every least detail. The other major possibility is represented by ‘s’, which stands for the lesser cyclicity, the proposition that there are similar, but not identical, cycles in time. Pure linearity is represented by ‘( )’, the model of the Bible and of Marxism. In linear systems, all of history is a single narrative whose episodes are understandable only as part of a whole

2008-12-11 18

Models of History The 20th century has discovered that models of

history are dangerous. The great totalitarian catastrophes of this period have been bound up with elaborate narratives that provided structure to the past and set out the form of an inevitable future. To state the thesis bluntly: given certain conditions, people will try to end the world. They do this through a sort of magical coercion, by telling stories in which the world (or the age, or the civilization, or the social system) is a character who dies. Sometimes the magic works.-John J. Reilly, The Perennial Apocalypse

2008-12-11 19

The Standard ModelCIR + t1 + p/f/t2 + !1/o/!2/

( ) Genesis is Genesis Today is Transition The End is Yet to Come

2008-12-11 20

Let’s break that down Let’s look at premillennial dispensationalism in

detail. Call it ‘the popular model’. This model starts

crusades, prompts the poor to overthrow the rich, and inspires the learned to bring about a new age by intrigue. It posits a world history which consists of a series of ages or ‘dispensations’, chief among them being the dispensation of the Law during Old Testament times, and the dispensation of Grace announced in the New Testament.

2008-12-11 21

Münster 1534-5 The city of Münster was ruled by a

revolutionary commune Jan Matthys and Jan Beukels, often

referred to as John of Leyden, were the two rulers

A coup was staged by Matthys’ supporters In response, the Bishop of Münster

beseiged the city for 482 days

2008-12-11 22

Jonestown This all might seem remote and exotic,

except that it keeps happening Jim Jones and John of Leyden are similar Despite the differences between them, this

suggests that violent apocalyptic communities obey a logic of their own

Jones, like many a medieval millenarian, was a preacher to the poor who slowly evolved into a tyrant

2008-12-11 23

The Alchemical Model Sometimes called the ‘hermetic tradition,’

this includes such systems as alchemy, neoplatonism and pythagoreanism

Some alchemical models may be called ‘four sided’ for the simple reason that they tend to be represented diagrammatically as a circle divided into four quarters, representing the four ages which in some sense represent the whole of time.

2008-12-11 24

Carl Jung By his own account, his interest in myth grew out of the

realization that certain symbols were showing up in his patient’s dreams which the patients had no business knowing about. But the symbols were familiar to Jung from obscure mythological and occult sources

Jung’s idea on alchemy is that alchemy had very nearly nothing to do with attempts to make gold, whether from lead or from anything else. True alchemy was the attempt to distill the philosopher’s stone out of gross matter. This material they sought to distill, the lapis philosophorum, is a reification of the pneumatic substance. It is a bit of God that has become trapped in the world.

There are five stages to the alchemical process, corresponding to the four elements, plus perfection.

2008-12-11 25

The Five Ages of the World Hesiod Nebuchadnezzar’s dream

2008-12-11 26

Aztecs The Fifth Sun Quetzalcoatl 2012?

2008-12-11 27

I speak to you of a Dark Age… The Renaissance ca. 1453 – 1564 The world became, as it were, covered up

by an elaborate web of signs Tied up in alchemy and Rosicrucians John Dee Comenius Giordano Bruno Kabbalah

2008-12-11 28

The Literary Model Spengler – The Decline of the West Toynbee – A study of History

2008-12-11 29

Sometimes the End of the World is Clearly the Appropriate Option H. G. Wells – The War in the Air Robert Hugh Benson – The Lord of the

World

2008-12-11 30

Strategic Bombing We see here a motif which appears in the Book of

Revelation, but which in secularized form has also appeared in every debate about strategic bombing in the 20th century: there is no hiding from the Wrath. Defense is inherently impossible, and the bomber will always get through.

This was actually first articulated in the Smuts report of 1917, and further elaborated in The Mastery of the Air in 1921

2008-12-11 31

Mutually Assured Destruction Nuclear strategy considered as a

millennial cult The strangest thing about President

Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative is that many of his opponents reacted hysterically against something they didn’t understand

He had essentially proposed to eliminate the technological apocalypse, and thereby falsify a millennial belief

2008-12-11 32

Harrapan There is no evidence that the Indus Valley

Civilization died in a fit of millennial ecstasy, but it does appear to have been a ‘fifth stage’ millennial society

2008-12-11 33

The Raskol The Raskolniki, the ‘Old Believers’ Occasioned by a liturgical upheaval in the

Russian Orthodox Church when the mass was retranslated Old Church Slavonic

A great mass of believers treated the change as a general apostasy

Mass suicide of whole villages by self-immolation or starvation was the result

2008-12-11 34

References and Resources http://www.johnreilly.info The Perennial Apocalypse, by John J. Reilly