The World / United States
United States
The most productive apocalypse factory in history: 1844, 1914, 1997, 2011, 2012 — and a prophecy of purification that predates them all.
The United States holds two end-of-the-world families in one archive: the indigenous prophecies of the land itself — the Hopi Purification, the Lakota White Buffalo Calf Woman's return — and the manufactured apocalypses of the industrial age, from the Millerites' 1844 to Heaven's Gate and the 2012 industry. The collision of the two is the country's defining contribution: a prophecy of a cleansed world meeting a millenarian machine that never stops producing dates.
Traditions
North American Indigenous Prophecy
draftedThe world as a series of cleansed worlds: the Hopi Purification and the Great Spirit Massauu's repeated remaking of the earth, the Lakota White Buffalo Calf Woman's promise of renewal — prophecies nearly identical in shape, told on the same continent for centuries.
2 myths
Modern Manufactured Apocalypticism
draftedThe industrial-age apocalypse: failed dates, reinterpreted prophesies, and the millenarian machine that never stops producing ends — from the Millerites' 1844 to Heaven's Gate and the date that became a shift in consciousness.
2 myths
Stories
Heaven's Gate: the Exit Ticket
draftedThe apocalypse as an exit ticket: a UFO group, a comet, and thirty-nine believers who left the Earth behind because it was about to be 'recycled'.
judgment · cosmic · judgment
The Great Disappointment
draftedThe founding failed date of the American apocalypse industry: the math was biblical, the crowd enormous, the date passed — and the movement, instead of dying, invented the doctrine that made the failure invisible.
judgment · judgment · cosmic
The Hopi Great Purification
draftedThe world has been purified before: three worlds ended in corruption, and the fourth faces its Purification now — a cleansing that will remove the corrupt and prepare the fifth world.
judgment · judgment · fire · flood · decay
The White Buffalo Calf Woman
draftedThe sacred woman who brought the pipe: she promises to return at a time of great trouble, and her return signals both danger and renewal — the Lakota apocalypse as a homecoming.
cyclical · judgment · decay