so, i was just thinking about the last time i got sick (i'm actually feeling just fine right now), and i referenced the giant joint handed to me at the party where i got attacked by a vcr. it took a few days to feel it, but i picked up something fairly virulent that night.

and, then i remembered back to the write-up i did about the seven seals, and joked about the oncoming apocalypse.

i also recently posted something about locusts in africa, suggesting that they just eat the damned things.

well, maybe i did get the seventh seal, which means what, exactly?

i was never particularly religious, but in my pre-teens found myself with the conundrum of all of a sudden having a born-again christian (ex-alcoholic) stepfather who dragged everybody to church with him, so i took the step of sitting down and actually reading the bible, top to bottom, at around the age of 10 or so.

even then, i was actually approaching the thing as an anthropologist. when i was very little, i had a fascination with dinosaurs, as so many young people do. that managed to develop itself into an interest in ancient civilizations, i guess you could say the humanities, well before i turned ten years old. this was still before the internet, so i took advantage of the tools i had before me, which was mostly an encyclopedia set. i would read through the articles on the romans and greeks and follow the footnotes out to the carthiginians and scythians; i especially enjoyed reading about the punic wars, or that's something that i have a clear memory of, at least. when i got a little older, i could take books out of the library, and these compendiums of ancient cultures were the thing i tended to head for.

so, the jews were an ancient civilization, and the bible was their book. to me, it was just like reading any other history book.

i think this also fed into my interest in the game civilization, which i first played on my stepfathers old computer, in the middle of the night, as it was stashed away in the corner of the basement, just outside my bedroom.

i did actually read the thing, though, and it is what it is - a genealogical saga adopted from a variety of sources. but, i didn't actually believe any of it, not any more than i believed in romulus & remus, or in any other origin myth. i've often remarked that i dispensed with christianity fairly promptly by simply reading the source material; it was just impossible to take seriously, even down to the vicious portrayal of god, which was just nefarious.

despite my rationalist tendencies, though, i have to say that it was immediately clear to me that the revelation is an eschatological text; that is, that it is intended to be a description of the end times, however inappropriately, and not a prophecy that has already happened. i would have to assume that any theologian that is attempting to assign the revelation to an already existing historical event, as realized prophecy, has a strange interpretation of the apocalypse, relative to accepted pan-christian dogma.

that said, if this is an end times prophecy, then it leaves it's exact meaning open to interpretation, especially considering how many times it's been retranslated.

so, i'm going to just be literal about this - the seventh seal is when the eighth angel comes in and destroys, or at least severely damages, the earth with a sceptre full of fire, which is so very pagan, isn't it? these trumpets appear to me to be part of this angelic ritual sacrifice of the earth, rather than any message of any sort. really. what the passage describes is a ritual destruction of the earth by the gods, articulated here as angels. see, and i'll let you bring in the neoplatonism here, even if i won't let you assign the events to the neoplatonic period.

if that's my seal, i can work with that.

"oh, the earth? it will be gone, soon."

metaphorically, is that what i'm actually doing, though, in my analysis of the situation?