The Apocalypse and the Saviour

An archetypal exploration of current world events

All things come in pairs. This is a simple underlying mechanism of reality, yet often overlooked. Whenever there is big, there must be small. Whenever there is darkness, there must be light. Whenever the apocalypse archetype is activated in the collective conscious there must be an Utopia: The promised land. The garden of Eden before Eve plucked the apple and took a bite.

On the one hand, nothing changes, on the other, change is the only constant. The screen on which the movie is projected is still, unchanging, but the movie itself is made up of still images that change in every microsecond. And only if the room is dark enough, can the projected light give life to the evolving imagery on the screen. We are all unique human beings. But as separate images projected on the one blank screen, we’re anything but. That is the strange paradox that humanity must work with. To walk with one foot in the eternal, and the other in the constantly evolving. To be completely unique in all our remarkable colours, while simultaneously being the same underlying ground of existence that anything else is.

Both our personal events as world events are the changing imagery on the screen. They are the workings of the archetypal structures, the gods that turn the wheel of reality itself. And the old gods have made way for the new. Poverty and uncertainty have made way for richness, progression and certainty. The lows have made way for the highs. But what is lost are the depths from which the highs emanate. What is lost are the roots, giving a tree the power to grow and resist changing weathers.

We, as a collective species, have forgotten the intelligence that guides us. Addicted to consumerism, we forgot what underlies our being. We forgot about our own mythos, the particular scene that is being played on the unchanging screen. We forgot about our own Daimons, guiding us to be the souls we were meant to be. And we forgot about the Imaginal realm, from which all of our brightest ideas are brought forth. Every scene has its theme, and ours is about to change. For if the pendulum moves in one direction, it inevitably swings back to the other side.

“History has always been a series of pendulum swings,
but the individual doesn’t have to get caught in that.”
- Robert A. Johnson -

Isn’t it telling that many people who have spent most of their lives looking inside have seen what is coming for humanity? And often, their visions aren’t optimistic. The myth of capitalism, infinite expansion, globalism and consumerism is coming to an end. But for what it will be replaced, nobody knows. What we do know is that when the balance between polar opposites is lost, the consequences are often dire. No wonder that the second coming of Christ is such a popular talking topic nowadays, as people unconsciously realize the world isn’t getting any better. Most look for Christ as the saving grace outside of them, to relieve them from the pain related to the inevitable change that is ahead of us. For when the archetype of apocalypse is getting more activated and the situation gets more dire, its opposite is constellated too. People are wholeheartedly desiring Utopia, the perfect world, believing that it will be infinite technological progression that will get us there. But one only desires a thing when that which is doesn’t satisfy.

So we believe Utopia must exist. And for it to become reality, we need someone to bring us there. Someone who promises all we have ever been looking for. A better world, a paradise in which all darkness is replaced for the light. Out of avoidance of the sheer discomfort of the apocalypse archetype within us, we project the messiah on individuals, groups or even algorithms (AI) that promise the potential for liberation. For the messiah is the bringer of Utopia, just as Mozes was for the Jews.

There are always people in line waiting to let the archetypal messiah be projected on them, often with great inflation as a consequence. Trump will liberate us all. In the Netherlands, Wilders will. AI surely will create the paradise that we all been longing for, for it has the potentiality to alleviate us from our day-jobs. When the hour goes dark, Christ will arrive once again, this time finishing off the devil for good. These human pain-avoiding mechanism are none other than myths, constantly repeating itself over and over through times of great uncertainty. But this time is different, we tell ourselves. Because this time, our intelligence and great technological revolution will save us from the changing mythos. So we believe.

It’s not that this view is wrong, it just neglects the wider view and the cyclical nature of existence. We look for the messiah outside, while the messiah has been in us all along. We as Westerners live the Christian myth, whether we believe in it or not. I personally haven’t been raised as a Catholic and have never had any interest in the subject whatsoever. Until images arose in consciousness that were Christian in nature. To quote Jung:

The God-image in man was not destroyed by the Fall but was only damaged and corrupted (“deformed”), and can be restored through God's grace. The scope of the integration is suggested by the descensus ad inferos, the descent of Christ's soul to hell, its work of redemption embracing even the dead. The psychological equivalent of this is the integration of the collective unconscious which forms an essential part of the individuation process.

If we do not individually search for the saving grace and confront the change we all inevitably have to endure inside ourselves, the current mythos will force us to it through apocalyptic world events. If we keep projecting our inner messiah on an outside person, we are bound to fall in the same traps as ancient civilizations before us did. Either way, the change of the mythos, the spirit of the times working its magic through all of reality, is inevitable.

In that sense, the messiah archetype is necessary, because it is an important part of Apocalypse’s archetypal constellation. Apocalypse isn’t the end of a world, it’s the revelation of what is hidden, the shedding of the skin, which annihilates an old perspective and gives rise to a new one. And the messiah, as an embodiment of this new perspective, is necessary to guide others to realize and embody the same view. Not by pretending to be a saviour, but to gently nudge any person they touch to look inside themselves and find their own messiah within.

Although often accused of heresy and even burned on the stake, it were people who dared to share what had been revealed to them that changed entire civilizations. People like Meister Eckhart, Mother Theresa, Leonarda DaVinci, Carl Jung and many others are the ones that pick up the thread of the collective mythos and are shown what the next step in humanity’s evolution might be. In that sense, they are messiahs, because they are burdened with revealing their inner revelations to a wide public. And the public does not like change. On the contrary, the public often tries to cling to the old paradigm, which ironically leads to messiah projections on people that promise to bring back the old world. Just only better.

The ones who are called do not try to create a new world in any way. They simply follow the threads as they reveal themselves. They create through non-doing, for any subtle urge to heal, help, fix, or change anything that is, is messing with the natural cyclical order. Which is quite simple, but nevertheless hard to bear. It starts with spring, a blossoming of the new, to then make way for the summery pinnacle of golden sunrays and harmony. But this is not to last. For what comes up has to come down, and what grows eventually decays. So when autumn sets, the weathers gets more violent, blowing off the leaves of the trees, forcing the world to shelter. Until finally, when the stormy chaos of autumn has done its work, the quiet but dead-like stillness of winter emerges to complete a cycle. The role of the messiah is not to mess with these cycles, but to follow its movements and be instructed on where it wants to go.

Real teachers leave no traces. They’re like the wind at night rushing right through you and totally changing you but leaving everything unchanged, even your greatest weaknesses; blowing away every idea of what you thought you were and leaving you as you always have been, since the beginning. - Peter Kingsley

We need those real teachers that Peter Kingsley talks about. We need messiahs among us that don’t create for themselves, but are called to plant the seeds for the future. We don’t belong in the future, we belong in the present. We don’t need plans for the future, we need to open our eyes for what is right before us. And maybe, just maybe, what is right before us will reveal its true face and tell us what we’re here for.