Topic: John Lash: Countdown To 2012
http://www.metahistory.org/Countdown2012.php
Countdown to 2012
Reflections on Kali Yuga, the Maya Endtime,
and the Western Narrative Spell
Krishna and Osiris
The Hindu-Maya-Egyptian correlation provides some mythological clues for profiling the start date of the Long Count. The death of Krishna and the murder of Osiris represent mythogenetic moments (Campbell's term) when our species' intrinsic access to the Sacred was ruptured, and consequently the cultural reflections and creative expressions of that access began to decay dramatically.
With this view of Krishna and Osiris–idiosyncratic perhaps, but based on well-known mythological material and matching the profile of predynastic times–I propose that the start time of the Long Count represents a break from goddess-oriented nature-wisdom, the cooptation of sacred biology for a theocratic agenda, and a consequent loss of contact with the Sacred immanent in the natural world, leading humankind into a dark age when contact with the Sacred is mediated by beliefs dictated by men who claim to speak for God.
Although the full historical picture would place its inception somewhat earlier, around 4400 BCE, the Age of Patriarchy can be synchronized with the Count along these lines... Since the dawn of that Age, communion with the intelligence of nature, embodied awareness of the Sacred, and reverence for the Divine Feminine, not to mention mortal woman herself, have all declined drastically. With this decline, the human species lost its gender balance, its natural moral disposition to goodness and cooperation (widely recognized in Paganism, as I have explained in Not in His Image), and fell under the spell of patriarchial and theocratic narratives such as the Egyptian and Babylonian fables of divine kingship and, of course, the Old Testament tale of the Chosen People.
Between 587 and 537 BCE a large part of the Jewish nation was exiled to the city of Babylon. When they returned to Canaan, the Yahwist scribes who were writing the progam of the father god merged their racial myth with Persian split-source dualism, a worldview that attributes good and evil to the same super-human agency. This model of cosmic conflict was worked into the Biblical narrative and determined all later variations of divine retribution and apocalyptic violence consistent with the crypto-fascist theocratic agenda, enacted in the global wars of religion that threaten the world today.
With the major power-players shifting, Europe became more vulnerable to Islam, the most virulent form of theocratic fascism on earth. The rise of Islam involved widescale genocide, often commited by Arabs against other Arabs, as seen today in Iraq.
Currently, Islamic imperialism in Europe is rolling like a shock wave across the continent. Moslems demonstrating against what they view as intolerance toward Islam are manifesting the very intolerance they condemn, but they are succeeding in their demands for special exemption of their religion from rational criticism. Islam presents the endgame formula of patriarchy and dominator religion, the stage where it wins or destroys itself trying. The initial conditions of the Long Count come to full and final expression in the theocratic fascism of Islam with its program for rigid social control, blind submission to revealed authority, menacing intolerance, and sexual apartheid, all founded on some words printed in a book that has been mass-produced since around 750 CE.
To summarize: the death of Krishna and Osiris timed to 3114 BCE indicates an escalation in the agenda of patriarchy. Male domination gained momentum when sacred kings were no longer anointed in rites of sexual congress with daughters of the Goddess. (I have repeated this point numerous times on this site, and I don ´t like to repeat myself, but I insist that this is a key historical insight we cannot afford to ignore. Read Merlin Stone, When God Was A Woman.) The suppression of goddess-oriented society led to the success of patriarchy, the domination of nature, and sexual apartheid–a pattern that can be traced in close historical detail, if one is so inclined. All this was accomplished by force and intimidation, of course, and by operating ‘by the book.’
So, around the nodal moment 551 BCE, Yahwist scribes buckled down to composing the rigid doctrinal narrative of the Chosen People, the directive script for Judeo-Christian salvationism, and around the nodal moment 731 CE Muslim scribes acquired the paper-based technology to spread their version of the story, inscribed in the Koran. The Holy Book (of whatever faith) is the main tool of indoctrination and behavioral control for the theocratic agenda.
The Book is, and has ever been, the sovereign tool of behavior modification, off-planet imperialism, a potent catalyst to ecocide, genocide, and suicide, the mass-produced weapon of mass destruction par excellence.
The Narrative Spell
So, my expanded definition of Kali Yuga is: the age of darkness (ignorance) and decadence (moral and material derangement), due to the break from Goddess wisdom, the imposition of off-planet morality dictated by a father god, and the cancerous spread of faith-based religion operating on the theocratic authority of The Book (Torah, Bible, Koran). Over the last 5000 years, the entire human species has fallen under the thrall of The Book. In Not in His Image, I propose the term narrative spell for the uncanny power of the salvationist script that encodes the beliefs of the three Abrahamic religions.
The mandate of the male-only creator god has a vast, fixating power based in fear and shaming. Those who adopt the Paternal Lie, or, more often, have it mindlessly imposed on them, live it out as if they are acting under post-hypnotic suggestion. Those who are forced to believe in the story of revealed religion enact it madly and without critical reflection or restraint. What they have received mindlessly, without consent, they act out mindlessly, disregarding the free choice of others. They behave as they believe. What they are told to believe is inscribed in The Book (Torah, Bible, Koran).
Mystic Confidence
I am not deeply enough involved in the current debate around 2012 to know if Arguelles ´s ideas are undergoing a revival, but I sense that others, a younger and more creatively inspired crowd, have taken over the discourse, and morphed it considerably. There may be a reprise of Arguelles ´ notion of dematerialization in some circles, but I would rather hope not. Calls for escaping the planet will not be tolerated on this site. I am probably out of touch with the pulsations of the new crowd who are building expectation of 2012, but it looks to me like the best options for the Mata endtime are erupting from the orgiastic imagination of younger people in the counterculture, people who are ignited with all manner of erotic, cosmic, artistic, mantic, mythopoeic, and esoteric inspirations.
I have not sensed anything comparable to this excitement since the Psychedelic Revolution of the 1960s. There is true mania in the air, a hint of divine madness, a sense that fantastic things are possible in life and art, that the world itself might be transfigured by acts of imagination. (This is, of course, exactly what the Romantics believed and proposed, a couple of hundred years ago.) A multi-frequency surge of mystical confidence is spreading through some areas of the youth culture. Are we seeing the first fair shoots of Pistis Sophia, confidence in the innate wisdom that bonds us with Gaia and draws us into the correction?
If Sophia relies in some way on humanity to achieve her correction, as the Gnostics taught, the human condition will either contribute to that magnificent possibility, or impede it. To accomplish the breakthrough, then, would depend on how we view the human condition, regarding both resistence to entering the correction, and the skill and inspiration required to enter it.
But what if the breakthrough of 2012 involve the breaking of the spell of The Book? What would it mean to break that spell? What conditions would arise? What kind of behavior would result? How would the human condition itself be changed, radically and permanently altered?
The mystic confidence in the air is savoury and palpable–but where is the new-born confidence located? What are we, the human species, confident in?
In my view, to use the Count as a tool for prediction is to misuse it. The question, ‘What ´s going to happen?’ is less helpful than the question ‘What is the behavior that most urgently needs to be changed in the immediate future, if we are to have a future?’ The Count can be an heuristic tool that allows us frame events and learn something about the compulsive patterns of history, as I've demonstrated above. As such, it need not be taken for a mysterious oracle that has the power to bring about what it foretells.
Against the Book
In the first chapter of The End of Faith, Sam Harris makes two outstanding observations: first, ‘most of the people in this world believe that the Creator of the universe has written a book,’ and second, ‘criticizing a person ´s faith is currently taboo in every corner of our culture.’ Of course, these are perfectly obvious facts of modern life. The force of Harris ´s argument throughout the book consists in his stating the obvious in such a way that it looks at once novel and alarming. Once it is said, in just so many words, that most people believe God has written a book, the belief looks patently absurd. Yet we know this belief is universal, deepseated, and longstanding.
Now, if suddenly countless numbers of people who hold this belief and adhere to The Book were to repudiate it, that would be an event worthy of Long Count expectations. That would be a paradigm shift to exceed the wildest prophecies of Jenkins and Calleman.
Let ´s recall Harris ´s second observation of the obvious: it is absolutely taboo in our society today to challenge or criticize matters of faith. But suppose this taboo also were suddenly to be overridden. Suppose that it became acceptable to challenge and even offend people on their beliefs. Suppose the tables were turned, and it was the offended party, not the offending party, who must go on the defensive in the debate over religious beliefs and faith-based principles. That would be a shift in social reality consistent with a breakaway from the narrative spell of patriarchy that has dominated Kali Yuga.
It would be a tremendous shift to start offending some people to get them to be accountible for what they believe, and for what is done by blind adherence to their irrational and intolerant convictions.
The fear of offending is not a measure of compassion or consideration, although it disguises itself as such. It a concession to the demand for special exemption exerted by members of these religions, who seek the advantage of enforcing their agenda by operating on values and beliefs that cannot, they insist, be questioned, criticized, or ridiculed.
The demand for special exemption is a disguised tactic for spreading tyranny and totalitarianism, the rule of The Book. There can no special exemptions from open social critique of any subject in a free society, least of all religious beliefs that drive social behavior and religious practices that define social identity. The society that succumbs to this demand is committing moral suicide.
This policy of appeasement signals the terminal decadence of Kali Yuga and the end of the long countdown to a planet-wide orgy of righteous self-immolation. Defiance of the taboo against religious offence would be a true paradigm shift with worldwide repercussions for the good. This is the kind of mass bahavioral change to look for in social life as the Maya endtime approaches. This is something worth discussing, not as a mere expectation, but as a challenge for the 2012 moment.
Belief Change
My book, Not in His Image, is an attempt to challenge and break the narrative spell of patriarchy. It presents a radical critique of faith by The Book. So do many articles on this site. Metahistory.org propose belief change as the single most powerful act that can make a difference for human life on this planet today. Some essays on this site exemply realistic expectations we might hold for a positive grand finale of the Long Count: for instance, The Promise of a Lonely Planet. People of faith can be as offended as they want to be–that is their problem. It is no crime to hurt someone ´s feelings, nor to discount what they have invested in their identity. In fact, it may be a sign of a healthy society that this can be done without fear of reprisal. But if society at large complies with the demand for special exemption, the faith-based program of patriarchal domination that got rolling into high gear at the start of Kali Yuga will prevail, down to the last man standing.
Breaking the narrative spell by open, non-inciting debate on faith issues is not the only way that the endtime could turn into a healing time for humanity. There is also another major path toward the breakthrough into a future safe for debate and difference... I will present my ideas on this subject in the companion article, now in development: Sophia Awakening.
January 2007 Andalucia