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Eschaton
This nOde last updated March 22nd, 2005 and is permanently morphing...
(7 Muluk (Water) / 12 Kumk'u - 189/260 - 12.19.12.2.9)

eschatology

eschatology (ès´ke-tòl´e-jê) noun
1. The branch of theology that is concerned with the end of the world or of humankind.
2. A belief or a doctrine concerning the ultimate or final things, such as death, the destiny of humanity, the Second Coming, or the Last Judgment.
[Greek eskhatos, last + -LOGY.]
- eschat´olog´ical (î-skàt´l-òj´î-kel, ès´ke-te-lòj´-) adjective
- eschat´olog´ically adverb
- es´chatol´ogist noun

"For the Eschaton, positioned in eternity, all things are somehow coexistent in time or outside of time.  All events have already happened. Shamanism is a formal technique for viewing this hyperdimensional object outside of time in a three-dimensional way, by transecting it many, many times until an entire picture of it emerges.  The mushroom evokes a profound planetary consciousness that shows one that history is a froth of artifact production that has appeared in the last ten to fifteen thousand years and spread across the planet very quickly.  But mind in human beings precedes the history of technology and goes back into the archaic darkness."
  - Terence McKenna - _Archaic Revival_
 
 

We have to understand. Whitehead said, "Understanding is the apperception of pattern as such;" to fear death is to misunderstand life. Cognitive activity is the defining act of  humanness. Language, thought, analysis, art, dance, poetry, mythmaking: these are the things that point the way toward the realm of the eschaton. We humans may be released into a realm of pure self-engineering. The imagination is everything. This was Blake's perception. This is where we came from. This is where we are going. And it is only to be approached through cognitive activity.

All these images - the starship, the space colony, the lapis - are precursory images. They follow naturally from the idea that history is the shock wave of eschatology. As close distance with the eschatological object, the reflections it is throwing off resemble more and more the thing itself. In the final moment the Unspeakable stands revealed. There are no more reflections of the Mystery. The Mystery in all its nakedness is seen, and nothing else exists. But what it is, decency can safely scarcely hint; nevertheless, it is the crowning joy of futurism to seek anticipation of it.
- Terence McKenna - _New Maps Of Hyperspace_

I am an Eschatologist. By this, I mean to say that I study the way the Earth is coming to an end, a final culmination and consummation of the grand experiment of life. The meteorologist studies the weather, but the eschatologist studies which way the wind is blowing. The Grand Catastrophe, the twin bookend to the Big Bang, is coming. I argue that it’s coming rapidly, certainly within the lifetime of most of the people alive on Earth today. This scares my friends, because they think that an End is equivalent to Death. But birth is the eschatological event of conception, and, seen in this light, an end does not have to be a nullifying event; it could, just as easily, be an unconditional liberation.
 

I have seen the Eschaton many, many times, approached it from a multitude of directions, but all of these have in all ways been the human dimensions of something which, I now know, extends far beyond ourselves - even though we might be among the only species on the planet to be consciously aware of it. I have seen the growth of human knowledge, as described by our technological prowess, and can say that at some point our prowess becomes, for all intents and purposes, infinite; we will find ourselves extended in ways that can only be described as entirely magical. While I had wondered what role the Gaian biota played in this catastrophic transformation of human being, I had always presumed that we were the instigators, and the main players in this final act of life.

How could I have been so blind? Well, my eyes had not been opened. I’ll give myself that much.
- Mark Pesce (inventor of VRML - virtual reality modeling language) - _Low Earth Orbit_

"Michel de Certeau said that the end of the world would be 'a white eschatology', that no secret would remain, and no shadow. Everything being revealed in an absolute spotlight, there would be a stupor', an absorption of all objects and of all subjects in the act of seeing."

  - Nichole Stenger

• jangle pop track _It's The End Of The World As We Know It_ MP3 by REM off of _Document_ 12" (1987)

The Greek word eschatos refers to the last things, the final things.  The Eschaton is a neutral way of naming what some call the Buddha Matraiya, some people call it theUFO intervention at the end of history, and some call it the second coming.   It's the last thing;  the Eschaton.  What I think is happening is that all boundaries are dissolving;  between men and women, between society and nature, and ultimately the boundaries between life and death.  We are going truly beyond ambiguity, beyond syntax, We've been trapped in a kind of demonic simulacrum for 25,000 years, created out of language.  Now the accelerating process of involuted connectedness characterizing this Whiteheadian progression of epochs toward the concrescence, is in fact being fufilled.

Terence McKenna - _The Evolutionary Mind_

• track _Destination Eschaton_ MP3 by The Shamen
• track _Eschaton Omega (Deep Melodic Techno)_ by The Shamen off of _Axis Mutatis_

Eskaton records:

• 001 Coil - _Coil vs The Eskaton_ (12")
• 004 Elph - _pHILM #1_ (10")
• 007 _ELpH vs. Coil: Worship The Glitch_ 10"x2
  • vinyl etching: Side D - "AUM GENERATOR"
• 010 Coil - _Time Machines_ (CD)
• 011 Coil - _Spring Equinox: Moon's Milk or Under an Unquiet Skull_ (7")
• 011 Coil - _Spring Equinox: Moon's Milk or Under an Unquiet Skull_ (CD)
• 014 Coil - _Summer Solstice: Bee Stings_ (CD)
• 016 Coil - _Autumn Equinox: Amethyst Deceivers_ (CD)
• 017 Coil/Zos Kia - _Transparent_ (LP)
• 019 Coil - _Winter Solstice: North_ (CD)
• 020 Coil - _Queens of the Circulating Library_ (CD)
• 023 Coil - _Moon's Milk (in Four Phases)_ (2xCD)
• 024 Coil - _Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil_ (CD)
• 028 Coil - _Time Machines_ (2x12")
• 027 Thighpaulsandra - _Michael Publicity Window_ (7")
• 033 Coh - _Love Uncut_ (CD)
• vinyl etching: Side B - "THE LAST SPHINX IN LONDON" off of _Black Light District: A THOUSAND LIGHTS IN A DARKENED ROOM_ 12"x2 by Coil on Eskaton (1996)

SUMMER SOLSTICE - BEE STINGS

7"      1998 Eskaton/World Serpent           ESKATON 013     UK

Bee Stings / Summer Substructures
CDEP    1998    Eskaton/World Serpent           ESKATON 014     UK

Bee Stings / Glowworms/Waveforms / Summer Substructures / A Warning From The Sun (for Fritz) Notes:
The second in a series of limited edition Equinox/Solstice releases, issued on Summer Solstice, 1998.

        The 7" is limited to 1300 copies on "honey" yellow vinyl and 50
        copies ongreen vinyl signed by John, Peter, Drew and Bill Breeze.

        The CDEP was deleted on Autumnal Equinox when the third part of
        the series was released.

        Vinyl etching:
        Side A - "HONEY FROM THE HORNET'S NEST"
        Side B - "FOR HARRY CROSBY AND HARRY SMITH"

Coil vs The Eskaton: NASA-ARAB
      x 12"     1994    Eskaton/World Serpent           ESKATON 001     UK

        Nasa-Arab (extended) / First Dark Ride

        Notes:
        Limited to 2500 copies.

        The title track is an extended reworking of the track from STOLEN
        AND CONTAMINATED SONGS. The Eskaton is a Coil pseudonym.

        "First Dark Ride" also appears on the anthology release UNNATURAL
        HISTORY III.

        Vinyl etching:
        Side A - "THE RESPONSIBLE ABUSE OF PLEASURE"
        Side B - "HIDE AMOUNGST YOURSELVES"

"Western religion has its own singularity in the form of the apocalypse, an event not placed at the beginning of the universe but at its end.  This seems a more logical position than that of science.  If singularities exist at all it seems easier to suppose that they might arise out of an ancient and highly complexified cosmos, such as our own, than out of a featureless and dimensionless mega-void.

Science looks down its nose at the apocalyptic fantasies of religion, thinking that the final time can only mean an entropic time of no change.  The view of science is that all processes ultimately run down, but entropy is maximized only in some far, far away future.  The idea of entropy makes an assumption that the laws of the space-time continuum are infinitely and linearly extendable into the future.  In the spiral time scheme of the timewave this assumption is not made.  Rather, final time means passing out of one set of laws that are conditioning existence and into another radically different set of laws.  The universe is seen as a series of compartmentalized eras or epochs whose laws are quite different from one another, with transitions from one epoch to another occurring with unexpected suddenness."

-- Terence McKenna, _True Hallucinations_

• ambient track _An End (Ascent)_ MP3 (160k) by Brian Eno with Daniel Lanois & Roger Eno _Apollo - Atmospheres & Soundtracks_ with Daniel Lanois and Roger Eno (1983)
• sunshine pop track _Under The Rainbow_ MP3 (160k) by The End off of _Introspection_ 12" on London (1969)

• track _The End Of History_ MP3 (vK) by Momus off of _The Sadness Of Things_ 7" on Cherry Red #137 (1995)
• industrial power noise track _Endtime Operations_ MP3 by Survival Unit off of _Thought Trigger Target_ on Krimljud #001 (2002)
• techno track _Mission End_ MP3 (224k) by Inigo Kennedy off of _The Gauntlet_ 12"x2 on Missile #045
• abstract techno release _The End_ CD by Hakan Lidbo on April #049 (2000)
  • 1. _Open Circle_
  • 2. _Ovaloids_
  • 4. _Hypercube_ MP3 (160k)
  • 5. _Undo Undone_
  • 7. _Noise Objects_
  • 8. _After The End_
  • 11. _Redo Undone_
• track _The End Of All Things_ MP3 by Nomeansno off of Wrong CD on Wrong/Alternative Tentacles (1989)

The ouroboros of information flows finally feasts not only on the social but on time and space as well. This is where implosion phases into the apocalyptic–voided of redemption, but no less absolute. Baudrillard's haunting image of man as nothing more than a node, a passive switch channeling networks of influence, is but a morose inversion of the subject at the end of history, with the final revelation being a thousand screens and satellites. This media eschatology is not peculiar to Baudrillard. Marshall McLuhan already spoke of the immersive and all-consuming character of the electronic environment, which shattered linear rationality and opened up an endlessly echoing now. "Time and Space died yesterday," Marinetti boasted decades before that in his Futurist Manifesto, recognizing that technology unleashes an almost alchemical transmutation of the real. "We already live in the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent speed."

• 604 track _Just Another Transmutational Process_ MP3 (vK) by Lumukanda off of _Banteer_ on Psy Harmonics #036

With cyberpunk sneers and the ridiculous GAFF of Y2K behind us, we are justified in finding the apocalyptic strain of postmodern critique rather old news. Here is the future, all around us: genetic engineering, chaotic weather, global fads, cyborg implants, robots, personality-modification pills, information everywhere. It's not a picnic, but it's hardly dull or devoid of possiblity. The dominance of the simulacrum has not stopped the creativity of the cosmos, and while "we" may not make the future, the future is certainly being made. It begs us to join in.

It's not that implosion was hogwash, the depleted fantasy of a dystopian philosopher without a hacker's bone in his body. Instead, we may have stumbled on the most hushed of eschatological secrets: that the apocalypse already happened. In other words, the implosion has occurred, or at least already begun, and yet life still demands to be lived, even if we are now posthumans living it.

- Erik Davis - _Anchors Aweigh!_

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