Apocalypse, The Transformation of Earth


Book Description

In the Revelation of St. John, spiritual worlds and spiritual entities appear both in images of the sensory world and in images of the mineral realm. This book disusses these two sides of world manifestation. It is often argued that the images of St. John's Revelations are intended in a purely symbolic way. If this is so, the mineral appears as a symbol for something of a soul-like and spiritual nature. The Revelator however, did not see symbols, but rather realities; even a symbol can be genuine only if something of the reality for which it stands shines through. It must, in a real way, be inwardly identical with what it intends, the essence from which it stems. Thus it must arise from the same reality; otherwise it contains no meaning. The images of the minerals in the Apocalypse are just as much reality as the minerals are on Earth. Neither is essential; both are simply manifestations of something essential. Hence, both are truly apocalyptic—the mineral we hold in our hand and the image we hold in our mind. They reveal themselves mutually. This book juxtaposes the objects of sensory appearance and natural-scientific research with sayings from the Revelation of St. John to express the joint background of the appearances. When we connect one with the other, it can lead to an encounter with the essence. This is an “esoteric mineralogy.” Friedrich Benesch enables a renewed encounter between the human being and mineral being, from which essence and future can then shine out. Anyone wanting to look more deeply into the Book of Revelations should read this beautifully illustrated, unique work on its meaning and its significance for both today and the future of humankind and the Earth.




Earth Abides


Book Description




Political Theology of the Earth


Book Description

Amid melting glaciers, rising waters, and spreading droughts, Earth has ceased to tolerate our pretense of mastery over it. But how can we confront climate change when political crises keep exploding in the present? Noted ecotheologian and feminist philosopher of religion Catherine Keller reads the feedback loop of political and ecological depredation as secularized apocalypse. Carl Schmitt’s political theology of the sovereign exception sheds light on present ideological warfare; racial, ethnic, economic, and sexual conflict; and hubristic anthropocentrism. If the politics of exceptionalism are theological in origin, she asks, should we not enlist the world’s religious communities as part of the resistance? Keller calls for dissolving the opposition between the religious and the secular in favor of a broad planetary movement for social and ecological justice. When we are confronted by populist, authoritarian right wings founded on white male Christian supremacism, we can counter with a messianically charged, often unspoken theology of the now-moment, calling for a complex new public. Such a political theology of the earth activates the world’s entangled populations, joined in solidarity and committed to revolutionary solutions to the entwined crises of the Anthropocene.




Apocalypse NO


Book Description

These are the strangest of days. We live in a time in which ending our species in our lifetime, even eliminating all life on this planet, are very real possibilities. The awareness of this acceleration toward an "end of days" - while so horrifying that we are in denial of it and hardly speak it - hangs over us and affects us in ways singular and fantastic.This book - Apocalypse No, Apocalypse or Earth Rebirth and the Emerging Perinatal Unconscious - awakens us to the unique character of our times. There are powerful factors and unconscious influences erupting into our world now which are changing the Earth and us in radical ways ... for good and ill. This unprecedented era in history is rife with the perinatal, that is, with repressed memories locked into us arising from our experiences of birth. We see that our impending apocalypse has to do with birth feelings, birth trauma - an emerging perinatal unconscious.Herein is revealed the underbelly of our modern world and life and the impetus behind our self-destruction. We see primal forces arising and exposed. We begin to understand how and why this is happening now. Knowing this gives us the power to do something about our dire situation. Finally, we can direct our attention to the roots of our drive to apocalypse and reverse it.More than that, this awakening provides a way of transformation for ourselves. For we see that in the heart of this darkness we are bringing down upon us lies the most incredible opportunity for taking a leap beyond what we think of as human nature. This time calls for a new hero's cycle - one that leaves behind the thuggishness of the old one. We are lifted beyond ourselves in a higher calling and a transcendent yet deeply rooted spirituality.We realize that the necessary answer to the dilemma of apocalypse or Earth rebirth lies, not only in the resurrection of a new Earth, but in the dawning of a new self as well.We will either heroically, somehow, save our species and our planet, which will require a change of our human nature unlike anything that has been asked of our species ever before, or we will be witnesses to the elimination of life on this planet in some way that we cannot imagine but can only be horrific in the extreme. This book is about facing, not denying, the uniquely dire character of our times and finding out what it says about us and requires of us.There is much here to see, and so much of it the mainstream would never touch for fear of creating a panic. Still, to survive our species must face our problems, not look away. And there is a nobility in doing that, which is unlike any kind of nobility or heroism required of us previously.However, this time brings with it an advantage and opportunity also unprecedented: At no other time has a higher calling or a path of true nobility of soul been more visible. To align oneself with this cause lifts one out of oneself and one's petty concerns into a heady and invigorating life purpose. There is great likelihood that we will be unable to reverse our dire trajectory; that is true. Still, those who face and take up this challenge will not suffer the agony of regretting that one could have done something but did not. Though we will need many noble souls to reverse our current downslide into oblivion, it is possible that simply a significant fraction of the world's population - like the "leaven in the dough" - can make all the difference in the world, literally, by tipping our course one way as opposed to another. This is especially true if such people - because of their healing and their awareness of the crisis - are motivated to place themselves in positions of influence and education, or to put their efforts toward healing, on individual and collective levels, in larger numbers than the average populace would. We can be heroes, standing in the right place and with the lever big enough, who move the world.







Touching the Breath of Gaia


Book Description

Arguing that what the earth chiefly needs is conscious human cooperation beyond the material realm, this unique, interactive, spiritual perspective on how to save the planet describes ways to communicate with Gaia herself and become her hands, allowing her to use her vast resources to save all the creatures on her surface, including humans. Because people have forgotten how to listen and converse with the goddess, this book purports that she uses natural catastrophes as her "hands," to get humankind's attention. By using the exercises for personal growth, readers can learn to use their emotions, intuition, and feelings rather than intellect and these traumas will be avoided and replaced with joy and companionship.




The World Is on Fire


Book Description

This “magnificently compelling” essay collection explores obsession, anxiety, and Existential dread from the Book of Revelation to the Liberace Museum (Minneapolis Star Tribune). The sermons of Joni Tevis’ youth filled her with dread, a sense “that an even worse story—one you hadn’t read yet—could likewise come true.” In this revelatory collection, she reckons with her childhood fears by exploring the uniquely American fascination with apocalypse. From a haunted widow’s wildly expanding mansion, to atomic test sites in the Nevada desert, her settings are often places of destruction and loss. And yet Tevis transforms these eerie destinations into sites of creation as well, uncovering powerful points of connection. Whether she’s relating her experience of motherhood or describing the timbre of Freddy Mercury’s voice in “Somebody to Love,” she relies on the same reverence for detail and sense of awe. And by anchoring her attention to the raw materials of our world—nails and beams, dirt and stone, bones and blood—she discovers grandeur in the seemingly mundane. Winner of the 2016 Firecracker Award for Creative Nonfiction Finalist for the 2016 Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize




Heaven on Earth, Just for Being


Book Description

This is an ascension manual heralding the golden age of enlightenment, activating the divinely intended plan of heaven on earth and restoring each being’s intended birthrights as divinely powerful, loving, and peace-conscious cocreators of heaven on earth, magically and easily, just for being. Only love is real.




Earth in Human Hands


Book Description

For the first time in Earth's history, our planet is experiencing a confluence of rapidly accelerating changes prompted by one species: humans. Climate change is only the most visible of the modifications we've made--up until this point, inadvertently--to the planet. And our current behavior threatens not only our own future but that of countless other creatures. By comparing Earth's story to those of other planets, astrobiologist David Grinspoon shows what a strange and novel development it is for a species to evolve to build machines, and ultimately, global societies with world-shaping influence. Without minimizing the challenges of the next century, Grinspoon suggests that our present moment is not only one of peril, but also great potential, especially when viewed from a 10,000-year perspective. Our species has surmounted the threat of extinction before, thanks to our innate ingenuity and ability to adapt, and there's every reason to believe we can do so again. Our challenge now is to awaken to our role as a force of planetary change, and to grow into this task. We must become graceful planetary engineers, conscious shapers of our environment and caretakers of Earth's biosphere. This is a perspective that begs us to ask not just what future do we want to avoid, but what do we seek to build? What kind of world do we want? Are humans the worst thing or the best thing to ever happen to our planet? Today we stand at a pivotal juncture, and the answer will depend on the choices we make.




A New Heaven and a New Earth


Book Description

In this book the author attempts to move beyond merely identifying and substantiating OT allusions in Revelation to considering how the presence of OT allusions and echoes affects reading Rev. 21.1-22.5 and how the OT functions within the context of the entire work. The author concludes that a variety of semantic effects are evoked by the author's continuous intertextual appeal to the OT: new creation, new exodus, new Jerusalem, new covenant, bridge, new temple-priesthood, paradise restored and renewed, inclusion of the nations, prophetic legitimization. The numerous allusions function to shape the reader's perception of eschatological hope.