in 1000 ad people Rejoiced about the prospect of "history" coming to an end. you can hear it in the chants from the period, the anticipation, euphoria, mania. now we are once again past the mark. i am not sure what cults exist today, but they're out there- signing away concerning earthquakes, examining numerology... was the antichrist born this millenia, will he live to be Christ's age when crucified before his work is underway, ushering in the Judgement? in a harsh world, with a terrifying Weight of endless history oppressing the meanings that were once enough to live by, the mind wants to imagine hell, an eternity of tortured afterlife, or paradise, accepting the host of the dead, judging their actions, making them significant, sin or non-sin, illuminating our time ahistorically, wants to contain in mythology what is much more terrifying, the prospect of an endless series of ages whose characteristics will be defined by our actions alone, and whose tenure is still an eye-blink in the slow time of the universe. we do not trust ourselves. corruption in the church, the crusades, among other things, led people very naturally to "faith" in the clicking of a divine clock, to render our works and times moot. behind this faith i think is real psychic desire, Desire to be undone, to have our raiments stripped before the eye of God, even in judgement to be made meaningful, just once, by a quick glance from the Throne. partaking in one of the oldest cultural heritages, denied in mainstream-bubblish, secular America, yet still lying under the surface... think of the myth of the flood. of ages being ended in water and fire. of time, of civilization really- because it is only in civilizations where you see this kind of thanatos, longing for mass-destruction, whereas so called "Primitive" cultures have an understanding of history based on cycles that will always return. Mircea Eliade talks of this, that the defining difference between "primitive" and "modern" societies is their psychic understanding of history. we intuitively grasp change linearly; its continuance- infinitude- scares the shit out of us. without the comfort of cycles (those of civilizations- famine, war. overpopulation, etc are too erratic and shocking to make sense) we dream of eschatology... of ultimate explanations, more drastic than the simpler cosmologies of fertility and death. Apocalypse; the beginning and end of time being more elaborated on and thought out, mapped, than the chaos conflicting us in-between.