image from The Macho Response
What if you threw a cataclysm and nobody came? At EnlightenNext, Gary Lachman, founding bassist of Blondie and author of the excellent Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius and a new book Jung The Mystic, wrote a terrific essay about the history of millenarianism, apocalyptic anticipation, and Harmonic Convergers' wishful thinking. From Lachman's article, titled "2013: Or, What to Do When the Apocalypse Doesn’t Arrive":
Growing up in the 1960s, through the media I was aware of the modern Brethren of the Free Spirit in places like Greenwich Village and Haight-Ashbury. I was also aware that something called the Age of Aquarius either was on its way or had already arrived (the jury is still out on this). Linked to this was the idea that the fabled lost continent of Atlantis-–which I read about in comic books and fantasy paperbacks–was due to surface sometime in 1969. Both were heralds of a coming golden age, when “peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars.” By the early seventies such anticipations had fizzled, but in 1974 they were briefly revived when comet Kohoutek sparked new interest in apocalyptic beliefs. A Christian group called the Children of God–who, incidentally, advocated “revolutionary lovemaking” (read: promiscuity)–distributed leaflets announcing doomsday for January of that year, which my friends and I read with interest. Predictably, Kohoutek fizzled as well. That same year, the science writers John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann published The Jupiter Effect, a bestseller predicting the devastating results (earthquakes, tidal waves, etc.) of a curious alignment of the planets on one side of the sun. When the alignment took place and nothing happened, they wrote a second book, The Jupiter Effect Reconsidered, explaining what went wrong. Not surprisingly, this sequel didn’t sell as well.
There were other millennial dates too. Remember the solar eclipse of 1999 and Y2K, the millennium bug? But the most significant millennial date so far in my lifetime surely was 1987, the year of the Harmonic Convergence–another planetary alignment–which was seen as the kickoff for the most anticipated apocalyptic event in recent years, the year 2012. For those unaware, proponents of 2012 argue that an ancient Mayan calendar–combined with permutations of the I Ching–predicts that tremendous changes will take place in that year and that, as one advocate expresses it, a “singularity,” an event of unprecedented ontological character, will take place and, as the saying goes, transform life as we know it. Recalling Norman Cohn’s criteria for millenarian belief, from everything I’ve heard about 2012, it fits the bill nicely.
"2013: Or, What to Do When the Apocalypse Doesn’t Arrive" (Thanks, Greg Taylor!)
