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Eschaton
This nOde last updated March 2nd, 2024 and is permanently morphing...
(first emerged March 22nd, 1998)
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eschatology
eschatology
(�s�ke-t�l�e-j�) 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
(�-sk�t�l-�j��-kel, �s�ke-te-l�j�-) 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_
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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.
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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
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 acceleratingprocess of involuted connectedness
characterizing this Whiteheadian progression of epochs toward
the concrescence,
is in fact being fufilled.
Terence McKenna -
_The Evolutionary
Mind_
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by The ShamenOmega (Deep
Melodic Techno)_ by The Shamen off of _Axis Mutatis_ Eskaton records:
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Coil:
Worship The Glitch_ 10"x2
AUM GENERATOR"
_Time Machines_ (CD)Moon's Milk or
Under an Unquiet Skull_ (CD)Bee Stings_ (CD)Library_ (CD)023 Coil - _Moon's Milk (in Four Phases)_
(2xCD)vinyl etching: Side B - "THE LASTSPHINX 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
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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.
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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) by The End off of
_Introspection_ 12" on London (1969) |
by Momus off of _The Sadness
Of Things_ 7" on Cherry Red #137 (1995) by
Survival Unit off of _Thought Trigger Target_ on Krimljud
#001 (2002) by Inigo Kennedy off of _The
Gauntlet_ 12"x2 on Missile #045
by Nomeansno
off of Wrong CD
on Wrong/Alternative Tentacles (1989)
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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 |
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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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