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195 articles across the wiki, grouped by section.
Prophecies & Predictions
Timeline
- 22 October 1844: the Day Passed — On 22 October 1844 the Millerites gather to meet the returning Christ.…
- Dürer publishes the Apocalypse woodcuts — In 1498 Albrecht Dürer publishes his Apocalypse, fifteen woodcuts of t…
- George Smith reads the Flood Tablet — On 3 December 1872 George Smith identifies a Babylonian flood on a cun…
- Heaven's Gate — In March 1997 the Heaven's Gate group commits mass suicide in Californ…
- Japan's Mappō begins — In 1052 CE, by a widely held Japanese reckoning, the world entered Map…
- Jehovah's Witnesses and the end of the times of the Gentiles — Charles Taze Russell's followers expect the end of the world order in …
- Phantom energy and cosmic doomsday — In 2003 a paper on "phantom" dark energy gives the Big Rip a name and …
- The Divine Incantations Scripture fixes Li Hong — In the 5th century CE the Lingbao scriptures set down the Chinese apoc…
- The Five Ages of the Universe — In 1999 the astrophysicists Fred Adams and Greg Laughlin publish a sch…
- The Flood Tablet is inscribed — In the 7th century BCE a scribe in the library of Ashurbanipal sets do…
- The Hopi message to the United Nations — On 10 December 1992 Hopi elders address the United Nations, carrying a…
- The Jeonggamnok circulates in Korea — From roughly the 17th century a banned Korean prophecy, the Jeonggamno…
- The Kalachakra reaches Tibet — In the 11th century the Wheel of Time tantra, with its prophecy of the…
- The Long Count reset — and the year nothing happened — On 21 December 2012 the Maya Long Count completed a b'ak'tun. The Maya…
- The Qur'an announces the Hour — Revealed across the early 7th century, the Quran makes the certainty o…
- The Revelation of John is written on Patmos — Around 95 CE a seer named John, exiled on the island of Patmos, sets d…
- The Xhosa Cattle-Killing — From April 1856 a girl's vision commands the Xhosa to destroy their ca…
- Wulfstan preaches the Sermon of the Wolf — Around 1014 the English archbishop Wulfstan turns the end of the world…
- Zoroaster moves the cosmic battle to the future — Around the 6th century BCE the prophet Zoroaster reframed the cosmos a…
Traditions
- Aboriginal Australian Eschatology (the Everywhen) — An ancestral order that established the world and still underwrites it…
- Andean Eschatology (Pachacuti) — The end as a turning-over: pacha kutiy, the reversal of world and time…
- Anglo-Saxon Eschatology (Wulfstan and the Wolf) — The end preached as an emergency: Wulfstan's Sermon of the Wolf to the…
- Armenian and Georgian Eschatology — The Christian Caucasus received Jewish and Greek apocalyptic early, ma…
- Buddhist Eschatology — Buddhism looks to the decline of the Dharma after the Buddha's teachin…
- Christian Eschatology — The teaching that history moves toward the return of Christ, a resurre…
- Documented Absences — Not every culture imagined an end. Ireland produced the richest otherw…
- Dogon Cosmogony and the Word — A cosmos created in stages from the word of Amma, seeded by the amphib…
- Egyptian Eschatology — In ancient Egypt the end came not to the world but to each person, who…
- Ethiopian Eschatology — A Christian kingdom that made the Kebra Nagast a charter of election a…
- German Eschatology (Götterdämmerung) — A 19th-century operatic reframing of Norse Ragnarök laid over a mediev…
- Greek Stoic Eschatology — The cosmos as a breathing thing: at the Great Year's end all matter re…
- Hawaiian Eschatology (Pele and the Fire) — The end in the island chain is written in the fire that built it: Pele…
- Hindu Eschatology — A vast cyclical cosmology of repeating yugas and kalpas, periodic diss…
- Igbo Eschatology — An ancestral cosmology of continuous renewal with no terminal event; t…
- Islamic Eschatology — A detailed end-times schema in the Quran and hadith: the signs, the re…
- Jain Eschatology (Avasarpini) — The Jains measure time in two vast half-cycles; the present descends t…
- Jewish Eschatology — From a national hope of restoration after exile to a cosmic end of day…
- Korean Prophetic Tradition (Jeonggamnok) — The end as dynastic script: the Jeonggamnok, a secret prophecy circula…
- Maasai Eschatology — A cattle people whose cosmology centres on the god Enkai and a broken …
- Mappo — The Japanese Buddhist belief in the end of the Dharma, the final corru…
- Mapuche Eschatology (Trentren and Caicai) — The war of the two serpents: the sea-serpent Caicai Vilu raises the oc…
- Mesoamerican Eschatology — The end-of-the-world imagination of the Maya, Aztec, and related peopl…
- Mesoamerican World Ages — The Mesoamerican cosmos is a series of world-ages, each created, destr…
- Mesopotamian Flood Tradition — The oldest written apocalypse tradition in the world: the Sumerian flo…
- Modern Manufactured Apocalypticism — The industrial-age apocalypse: failed dates, reinterpreted prophesies,…
- Mongolian Eschatology — A steppe Buddhism that received the Kalachakra war and the Shambhala m…
- Norse Eschatology — The Germanic and Scandinavian worldview of a cosmos fated to die in fi…
- North American Indigenous Prophecy — The world as a series of cleansed worlds: the Hopi Purification and th…
- Polynesian Eschatology (Ruaumoko) — The end as geology: the youngest child of the earth mother, never born…
- Roman Eschatology (Sibylline Oracles) — Rome inherited Greek oracular prophecy, Christianised it, and turned t…
- Scientific Eschatology (The Secular End) — The end without a god: heat death and the second law, the Big Rip and …
- Slavic Eschatology — No native canonical apocalypse among the early Slavs; what survives is…
- Taoist Eschatology (Li Hong and the Incantations) — The end as renewal: the Divine Incantations Scripture (5th c. CE) tell…
- The Albanian Absence — The Albanian oral tradition carries no native end of the world; its co…
- The Xhosa Cattle-Killing (1856–57) — The end of the world with a date and a body count: the prophetess Nong…
- Theravada Eschatology (Metteyya) — The Buddha named a successor who will come when the teaching is forgot…
- Tupi-Guarani Eschatology (Land Without Evil) — The end as exodus: the world will be destroyed — by flood, by fire, by…
- What Is Eschatology — The study of last things, and the two great shapes end-of-the-world st…
- Yoruba World Cycles (Ifá) — The Ifá divination corpus carries the Yoruba account of world ages — t…
- Zoroastrian Eschatology — The first religion built around a future end of the world, where a sav…
By Country
- Albania — An oral mountain culture whose native cosmology explains origins and c…
- Armenia — The first Christian kingdom became a mountain keep of apocalyptic lite…
- Brazil — Tupi-Guarani prophets led migrations toward Yvy marã e'ỹ, the land wit…
- Canada — Inuit cosmology holds the world in repair rather than driving it towar…
- Chile — The Mapuche flood pits Caicai Vilu, serpent of the sea, against Trentr…
- China — Two schemes ran in parallel: the mandate of heaven, which replaces dyn…
- Denmark — Ragnarök was shared across the Norse world, and Denmark's witness is a…
- Egypt — Egyptian eschatology is administered one soul at a time: the heart wei…
- Ethiopia — A Christian kingdom that made the Kebra Nagast a charter of election a…
- Finland — The Kalevala carries the theft and shattering of the Sampo, the loss o…
- Georgia — A Christian Caucasus kingdom that received the Enochic and Petrine apo…
- Germany — A German end of the world built twice over: the medieval Last Emperor …
- Greece — Greece supplies both an impersonal cycle and a revealed ending: Hesiod…
- Guatemala — The Popol Vuh records the failed creations before the present world: h…
- Hawaii — Pele's migration down the island chain destroys and creates the same g…
- Iceland — Iceland preserved the Norse end of the world in writing: the Völuspá i…
- India — Hindu time runs in kalpas of 4.32 billion years, withdrawn and project…
- Iran — Zoroastrian frashokereti is the first clear religion of a future end: …
- Iraq — Mesopotamia produced the oldest surviving flood narrative and the olde…
- Ireland — Medieval Irish literature built the most populated otherworld in Europ…
- Israel — The Hebrew prophets turned oracles of judgment into the Day of the Lor…
- Italy — Rome is the city Revelation encodes as Babylon, and the seat from whic…
- Japan — Mappō dated the loss of the Buddha's teaching to 1052, and the respons…
- Korea — The Jeonggamnok, a prophecy of dynastic collapse circulating in manusc…
- Lithuania — The Baltic song corpus preserves a sun with a household and a fate, a …
- Mali — Dogon cosmology, recorded on the Bandiagara escarpment by Griaule and …
- Mexico — The Mexica held that four suns had already been destroyed and that the…
- Mongolia — A steppe Buddhism that received the Kālacakra war and the Shambhala my…
- New Zealand — Māori cosmogony makes the world by force, prising Ranginui and Papatūā…
- Nigeria — The Yoruba hold that the world runs through successive aòn, ages that…
- Norway — The poems that narrate Ragnarök were composed and sung across the Nort…
- Peru — Pachakuti, the turning-over of the world, is the Andean name for a cos…
- Saudi Arabia — The Quranic Hour is a certainty without a date, and the hadith built o…
- South Africa — The Xhosa Cattle-Killing of 1856–57, a millenarian movement in which a…
- Sweden — Sweden holds the runic record of the end: the Rök stone's prophecy of …
- The Modern World — Physical cosmology supplies endings with no author and no addressee: h…
- Tibet — The Kalachakra tantra, transmitted to Tibet in the eleventh century, h…
- United Kingdom — Wulfstan's Sermon of the Wolf to the English (c. 1014) read the Danish…
- United States — Two end-of-the-world families share this soil: the Hopi and Lakota mor…
Figures
- Apophis — The ancient Egyptian serpent of chaos who attacks the sun god Ra every…
- Fenrir — The great wolf of Norse myth, bound by the gods yet fated to break fre…
- Gilgamesh — The Sumerian king whose quest for immortality leads him to the survivo…
- Jörmungandr — The World-Serpent of Norse myth, cast into the sea by Odin, who encirc…
- Kalki — The tenth and final avatar of Vishnu, who rides a white horse with a f…
- Maitreya — The future Buddha who will descend when the teaching has faded, redisc…
- Surtr — The fire-giant of Muspelheim who leads the burning of the world with a…
- The Antichrist — The adversary and false counterpart of Christ in Christian thought, wh…
- The Dajjal — The False Messiah of Islamic eschatology, a one-eyed deceiver who clai…
Myths & Narratives
- Apophis: the Serpent at the Edge of Night — The Egyptian end of the world is a nightly event: the chaos-serpent at…
- Armageddon — The final battle of the Book of Revelation at "Mount Megiddo," a name …
- Atra-hasis — The Akkadian epic in which the gods flood humanity for being too noisy…
- Book of Daniel — A Jewish apocalypse of the second century BCE that introduced resurrec…
- Book of Enoch — A Jewish apocalypse of the second century BCE that opened the heavens,…
- Book of Revelation — The Christian apocalypse of John, a revealed vision of a final battle,…
- Deucalion: The Greek Flood — The Greek flood survivor: warned by his father Prometheus, Deucalion b…
- Ekpyrosis: the Stoic Conflagration — The world as an ever-living fire: the cosmos periodically burns itself…
- Fimbulwinter — The terrible three-year winter that precedes Ragnarök in Norse myth, t…
- Five Suns — The Aztec myth of four worlds that have already ended in flood, fire, …
- Frashokereti: the Final Renovation — The world does not end so much as get fixed: the last savior appears, …
- Gog and Magog — The nameless northern nations of biblical and Islamic eschatology, con…
- Heaven's Gate: the Exit Ticket — The apocalypse as an exit ticket: a UFO group, a comet, and thirty-nin…
- Kalachakra and the War of Shambhala — The Wheel of Time's final war: the hidden kingdom of Shambhala preserv…
- Kali Yuga: the Age of Darkness — The age of darkness: dharma shrinks to a quarter, lifespans to a fract…
- Kalki: the Avatar on the White Horse — The tenth and final avatar of Vishnu: a white horse, a flaming sword, …
- Li Hong: the Taoist Messiah — China's messiah: Li Hong returns at the end of each world cycle to res…
- Maitreya: the Future Buddha — The promise that ends the dark age: the dharma vanishes, the world dec…
- Mappō: the Latter Day of the Law — A dated apocalypse of decline: after the Buddha's teaching fades, the …
- Marduk and Tiamat: the Battle Before the World — The cosmic battle between Marduk and the sea-dragon Tiamat — the templ…
- Mesopotamian Flood — The oldest surviving end-of-the-world story: the gods drown humanity i…
- Pachakuti — The Andean prophecy of a world-upending turn, when time overturns and …
- Pele: the Fire That Makes and Ends the Land — The end written in the island chain's own geology: the goddess of the …
- Pralaya: the Dissolution of the Universe — The universe as a day: at the close of Brahma's day, fire and flood un…
- Qiyamah — The Resurrection in Islam, when all are raised for judgment at the blo…
- Ragnarök — In Norse myth the gods fall in a final battle against the giants and m…
- Ruaumoko: the Child Who Sleeps Beneath the World — The youngest child, never born: conceived as the sky father and earth …
- Surtr and Muspelheim: The Fire That Waits — The fire giant who guards the flaming realm of Muspelheim, waiting wit…
- The Baltic Fragments: a Sea That Will Cover the Land — An end in fragments: the Baltic tradition imagines the sea rising over…
- The Big Rip and the Big Crunch: the Geometry of the End — The end as geometry: if expansion reverses, everything falls together …
- The Book of Daniel and the Four Kingdoms — The first dated apocalypse: four beast-empires, a stone cut without ha…
- The Book of the Heavenly Cow — An Egyptian myth of why the gods withdrew from the earth, as Ra sends …
- The Cattle-Killing: the Apocalypse That Kept Its Date — The one apocalypse that happened on a date: a teenage prophetess, a co…
- The Cherokee Earth and the Four Cords — The earth is an island suspended by four cords from the sky — when the…
- The Dajjal: the One-Eyed Deceiver — The end's deceiver: one-eyed, marked with the word kafir between his e…
- The Day of the Lord — The first apocalypse with a date in principle and never in fact: a day…
- The Flood of Manu — India's flood: the first man is warned by a fish that grows to a mount…
- The Flood of Utnapishtim — The oldest complete flood apocalypse in world literature: the gods dro…
- The Great Disappointment — The founding failed date of the American apocalypse industry: the math…
- The Heat Death: the End Without a God — The end written in the second law: no god, no judge, no remnant, only …
- The Hopi Great Purification — The world has been purified before: three worlds ended in corruption, …
- The Ifá Corpus and the Ages of the World — A divinable end: the Yoruba world ages are patterns in the Ifá corpus,…
- The Inuit Renewal: a World That Is Remade, Not Ended — The Arctic end is a turnover: the world grows old and is renewed, neve…
- The Irish Absence: a People Without an Apocalypse — The richest otherworld in European myth and no end of the world: Irela…
- The Jeonggamnok: Prophecy as Politics — The end as dynastic script: Korea's secret prophecy schedules the fall…
- The Kalevala's Non-Apocalypse — The epic that breaks the world's magic mill and never ends the world: …
- The Land Without Evil — The end as exodus: the world ages and corrupts, the prophets sing it i…
- The Long Count and the Year Nothing Happened — The most believed end of the world in history was built from a calenda…
- The Nommo and the Word: the Dogon End — The end as recollection: the Dogon cosmos is a word spoken by the crea…
- The Popol Vuh and the Failed Creations — The K'iche' Maya account of creation as a series of failed endings: hu…
- The Sermon of the Seven Suns — The Buddha's physics of the end: seven suns appear one by one, drying …
- The Shinto Absence: Gods Who Do Not End the World — Japan's native gods do not end the world; they renew it, withdraw from…
- The White Buffalo Calf Woman — The sacred woman who brought the pipe: she promises to return at a tim…
- Trentren and Caicai: the Mapuche Flood — The war of the two serpents: the sea-serpent Caicai raises the ocean t…
- Weighing of the Heart — The ancient Egyptian judgment of the dead, where the heart is balanced…
- Wulfstan's Sermon of the Wolf — The end preached as an emergency: England is collapsing, the Danes are…
- Ziusudra: The Sumerian Flood — The oldest flood story we have: the gods decide to destroy mankind, En…
Artifacts
- Aztec Sun Stone (Piedra del Sol) — Late post-Classic Mexica basalt monolith, 3.6 metres in diameter, 24.6…
- Bundahishn Manuscript (Pahlavi Cosmogony) — Ninth-century CE Pahlavi manuscript of the Bundahishn (Primal Creation…
- Dürer's Apocalypse (The Four Horsemen) — Albrecht Dürer's Apocalypse with Pictures (1498), fifteen woodcuts ill…
- Genshin's Ōjōyōshū (Essentials of Rebirth) — Heian-period manuscript of Genshin's 985 CE treatise, written on the e…
- Hopi Message to the United Nations (1992) — Official UN document submitted by the Hopi delegation, 10 December 199…
- Rök Runestone (Ög 136) — Granite runestone raised c. 800 CE in Östergötland, Sweden. The longes…
- The Flood Tablet (Gilgamesh Tablet XI, K.3375) — Neo-Assyrian clay tablet, seventh century BCE, from the Library of Ash…
World-Age & Cosmos
- Big Rip — A conjectured cosmic end in which accelerating dark energy tears the u…
- Ekpyrosis — The Stoic doctrine of periodic cosmic conflagration, in which the univ…
- Kali Yuga — The last and worst of four world-ages in Hindu thought, an age of decl…
- Pralaya — The periodic dissolution of the universe in Hindu cosmology, when the …
- Scientific Eschatology — What physics and cosmology say about how the universe will actually en…
Essays
- Kali Yuga and the Argument About When It Began — A long-form essay on kali yuga and the argument about when it began.…
- Mappō: The Japanese End of the Dharma — A long-form essay on mappō: the japanese end of the dharma.…
- Qiyamah: The Architecture of the Day of Resurrection — A long-form essay on qiyamah: the architecture of the day of resurrect…
- Ragnarök and the Remnant — The Norse end of the world is the most completely described apocalypse…
- The Cattle-Killing: A Real Apocalypse in South Africa — A long-form essay on the cattle-killing: a real apocalypse in south af…
- The Flood Tablet and the Invention of the End of the World — A long-form essay on the flood tablet and the invention of the end of …
- The Grammatical Shift: Zoroaster and the Invention of the Future — A long-form essay on the grammatical shift: zoroaster and the inventio…
- The Great Purification: Hopi Prophecy and the American Millenarian Mirror — A long-form essay on the Hopi prophecy of the great purification: how …
- The Year Nothing Happened: 2012, the Long Count, and the Manufacture of Apocalypse — A long-form essay on the year nothing happened: 2012, the long count, …
- Who Made the End: Societies, Scribes, and the Invention of the World's Last Day — A long-form essay on who made the end: societies, scribes, and the inv…