With December's disastrous tsunami in the Indonesia area, followed by days of torrential rains in California that triggered damaging mudslides, apparently there were people asking, "What is going on with our planet?" Even one major television network asked the question on the evening news and interviewed scientists to answer it. The scientists say that all that has happened is within the norm for the earth, though earthquakes and tsunamis on the scale of the one recently experienced in Southeast Asia don't happen that often. However, in some people's minds the question arises. Is this a sign of the end times?
This is far from a new question. Actually, it is an archetypal question - one people have asked for a very long time. Edward Edinger addresses the whole concept in his book Archetype of the Apocalypse. He begins by defining the word archetype in the way in which Jung used it, as "a pattern: a primordial psychic order of images that has a collective or generalized quality..." (Edinger 2) Archetypes come from the collective psyche rather than the personal and have another aspect, which Edinger notes, we do not pay as much attention to but should. He continues, "...the archetype is a dynamic agency: It is a living organism, a psychic organism that inhabits the collective psyche." (Ibid.)
It is no wonder that a catastrophic event like the recent tsunami triggers the question of end times for some people. The pattern, the idea of end times, is in our collective unconscious and perhaps with good reason. The human race has seen civilizations rise and fall, and at times natural disasters have contributed to the set of circumstances bringing about the fall. Like the idea of the dying and rising god, there seems to be an idea of the coming to an end of things as we know it and afterward a starting over. This idea was reflected long ago in the Mayan calendar, which was divided into periods of time after which the end of the Mayan world was to come. It is also reflected in the apocalyptic writing, such as the "Book of Revelation" in the Bible.
To this point I have been using the word "apocalypse" in the way that I think many people today use it, loosely referring to the end times. However, as Edinger traces the root of the word in Greek and explains it, in the original it meant to "take away the covering," like uncovering a secret. When we speak of apocalyptic literature in the Bible, we refer to those books which, with their rich symbols, hint at secrets about the end of something. Thus, in our usage the word has come to mean to us the end of an age.
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Bonnie McCarson's Jungian Psychology topic, please visit the Discussions page.