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If numerous world mythologies are to be believed, great floods have been a regular occurrence since the dawn of time. If we are not to take them literally, what can they tell us about ourselves and our world?
From the Jews:
And the LORD said unto Noah, "Come thou and thy entire house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth. For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth."
Genesis ch7 v1-7
From the Incas:
A Llama Buck, aware that the ocean was about to overflow, was behaving like somebody who is deep in sadness: it cried, it wouldnt eat. The llama's owner got really angry and threw out the cob from some maize, saying "Eat, dog! This is some fine grass I'm letting you rest in!" Then that llama began speaking like a human being. "You simpleton, whatever could you be thinking about? In five days, the ocean will overflow and the whole world will come to an end." The man got scared and said "Whatever can we do?" The llama replied "Let's go to Villca Coto Mountain. There we'll be saved. Take along five days food for yourself." They stayed there huddling tightly together. The waters covered all the mountains and it was only Villca Coto Mountain's peak that was not covered. Water soaked the fox's tail [as it didn't get high enough]... Five days later, the waters turned back and began to dry up.
The Huarochirí manuscript, Ch3
In the beginning, there was the Word, and the Word was Bang. And the word went BANG and time began. And it ushered in a kind of Golden Age. The Earth was fresh and new. Milk and honey flowed in the rivers, and in the gardens of paradise, we walked in harmony with the animals (for they too had language in those days) and we partook of the same fruits of the trees. We were Gods and we walked with Gods. But then we transgressed. We ate the fruit of a forbidden tree, or we said the wrong thing, or maybe it was just the right time. A flood came, and drowned our whole world, taking us with it.
There were only a few survivors, but we tried to build a new world the Silver Age, some called it, or the Age of Fire for others. We still had some power. Gods walked the earth but we were no longer the Gods. We had to work for a living, but humans and animals still lived in harmony. But then someone murdered one of the animals. The animals ran away and put on disguises and never spoke to us humans again. The Gods got really angry and rained down fire on everyones heads. Only a few of us survived.
The next time round, some say we were heroes, living in the Bronze Age. The Gods occasionally came down to visit or speak to a select few Chosen Ones who would be able to impart wisdom to the world. We built Troy, Jerusalem, Xian and Shangri-La and although we had to work harder for our food, still we lived in dignity and splendour. Others say we were nothing but failed automatons made of wood, and the Gods had gone too far the other way. In any case, another world ended under the shattering blows of an earthquake.
Finally, we came to the fourth world, the world we live in now. The Age of Iron, a place the Gods no longer want to visit. Its a hard life, and mankinds entire quest since the ferrous dawning of our current age is to figure out ways to make our hard working lifestyles easier so as to avoid the sense that we have truly fallen down.
But behold - can we not see the floodwaters rising again? Are they the swelling tides of global warming and climate change come to destroy our world again, or are they something else? Are they our racial memories reminding us of the true nature of the flood myths and the cycles of ages?
According to the considerations of the ancient Mayan Long Count calendar, our current world was born on August 11th, 3114 BC out of the destructive fire of the previous world incarnation, and is scheduled to end on December 21st, 2012AD having lasted some 5000 years. Some people in the world have chosen to take this prediction quite literally, doling out dire forecasts to anyone who will listen.
With the rise in awareness of global warming, environmental concerns have been married up with this New Age millennial fever, and suddenly our civilisation is on the verge of failing due to rising ocean levels, depleted oil and coal supplies and just generally choking ourselves to death in smog-laden cities. Political concerns bring us into panics about terrorism and war. Economic concerns predict the next Great Depression due to a dwindling worldwide workforce. Whilst there is certainly some truth at least in the environmental considerations and some room for concern in the political sphere, there is something deeper going on in our collective human psyches.
Similarly, information theory suggests that 2012 is the key year as well. The theory goes that the amount of knowledge that the human race possesses doubled in the period from the beginning of the Roman Empire to 1500. It doubled again from 1500 to 1900. Then, it doubled again in the much shorter time span of 75 years. Then, from 1975 to 1992, it again doubled. And so on, until 2012, where the theory tells us that information will be increasing at an almost infinite rate, double many times every second. How will we hold ourselves and our minds together against this information onslaught? Will we even have to keep it together or fight against this phenomenon, or will there be another way of coping?
And what about the oil, the Mayan prediction, and the End? We know that in some way, our time is up. Not quite that were finished or our existence is due to end. But that something is about to drastically change, such that we may no longer be us so much any more.
We are about to suffer the Fifth Great Flooding of the World.
To understand this strange sentence, we need to forget a lot of things. We need to forget what we think we know about our politics, our environment and our information. We need to forget for a moment our futures and take a look back into our pasts. If we do this, we can see immediately that this has happened before. Wasnt it Noah who prophesied the end of the world when the flood came? Wasn't it the Llama Buck who wised the people up to the oncoming flood and retreated to the highest mountain? (*1)
The Mayan Long Count and its attendant mythology tells us that each of the previous worlds ended violently. Each of the previous Long Counts was met with rising waters, or the sky catching fire, or a great earthquake. This is strange, because earthquakes dont tend to destroy entire worlds. The sky doesnt tend to catch fire, and floods very rarely cause civilisations to fall (*2). We could simply say that this is mere myth, and literal interpretations of it will never work, and then dismiss it entirely. But this will block our way to understanding. Something deeper is going on here than mere doomsaying or literalist panic. To appreciate it fully is to understand not only our past, but to realize our destiny as human beings.
But to do so, we need to start to understand something of the technical language of myth. Not the psychological interpretations, or the inspirational, both of which are valid. We need to have some understanding not only of our history as told in mythologies across the world, but also a clear knowledge of astronomy. For it is where mythology and astronomy meet that Flood Myths and the End of Our World can be truly comprehended.
(c) Bruce Rimell, June 2005
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