Revelation 22:13: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”
Throughout the course of this past workweek, I’ve seen many women sporting the same hoodie. This hoodie is black and it has a white emblem on the back of the hood. The emblem is the omega sign, the last letter in the Greek alphabet.
+
While walking to work on Saturday morning, I noticed that the road sign for any street that reaches an impasse is similar in appearance to the last letter of the Greek alphabet. The sign is green and the circuitous or bent arrow creates the omega shape.
=
What we have here is the symbolic convergence of the omega, or the end, and an impasse, or that which is not passable by any standard, formulaic method.
These symbolic hoodies and road signs point towards:
Death.
Finality.
Cessation.
Muerte.
The black hole that sucks space and time back into itself.
The primal womb.
The matrix of possibilities.
Pralaya.
The dissolution of form and content.
The Big Crunch.
The self-actualization of the Eschaton.
Hmm…bummer. Things are looking pretty grim here. If these girlie hoodies and trite road signs are pointing towards the end of life, civilization, and art itself, what are we supposed to do here? Should we build shelters? Should we sell everything we own? Should we cryogenically preserve ourselves? Should we stop doing our taxes? Should we start millenarian-esque cults? Should we make video games, movies, and plays about our own inevitable demise? More importantly, should I warn people about the “important signs” I’ve seen like some mad, ballistic prophet?
No.
No I shouldn’t.
Revelation 22:13: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”
Even though these hoodies and road signs are gently guiding me and maybe even us towards some black hole in the future, I still feel it is crucial that we don’t lose our marbles here. Besides, the omega symbol also resembles things that are rather life-affirming and positive. For example:
A tortoise shell.
A secular or cosmic egg.
A dome, cupola, or qubbah.
The blossoming head of a plant.
All these symbols are synonymous with the productivity, conservation, and resilience of life. They are hardly grim. If one were to graft the multifarious meanings behind these symbols onto the momentous last letter of the Greek alphabet, one would see the hidden meaning behind the symbol itself. Of course, the hidden meaning deals with the reality of cosmic cycles, and cosmic cycles are the result of divine play, lila. This ultimately means things are okay. Things are going ahead according to the spontaneous plan of No-Self. I don’t need to run out into the streets screaming:
“The end is nigh! The end is nigh! Might as well get high! Might as well get high!”
All is well. All is quite well.
I would like to end this post with the words of Terence McKenna. In a cool essay in the book, “The Archaic Revival,” Terence talks about his heterodoxical, eschatological theory regarding the nature of time. At the end of the intellectually stimulating and engaging description of his off-kilter theory, he states:
“History will end, and the transcendental object that has been drawing being into ever deeper reflections of itself since the first moments of the existence of the universe will finally be completely concrescent in the three-dimensional space-time continuum. Then the moving image of time will have discovered itself to be Eternity.”
Right on.
No comments:
Post a Comment