Apocalypse, A Love Story – A Presentation at the Philosophical Research Society
Join Maryam Sayyad as she unpacks the myth of the apocalypse, and the agony and ecstasy of transformative revelations. In most of the Western world, apocalypse evokes the Biblical Revelation to John,bringing to mind notions of doom and images of catastrophic endings. The preponderating aura of Revelation is one of carnage after all, and its preponderating god is a God of Wrath whose unceasing assault on the world John describes in gory detail. And yet, beneath the deafening trumpets and barely audible under their thunderous battlecry, we can hear him whispering a simple love story.
This presentation traces the romance in John’s Revelation back to the Old Testament and through Near Eastern traditions to arrive in the dark soil of an Earth-Mother mythos where mystical union replaces death, rapturous morbid ecstasy replaces agony, and doom becomes initiatory. The myth of the apocalypse portrays an initiation through death and loss when surrendering to the end is the only option. The old order has passed away (Revelation to John 21:1).
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