Secret_History

Chapter 6
History and Catastrophe
The Noah Syndrome
The story of Noah and the Ark is the primordial story of salvation; the original
Quest for the Holy Grail; - the building of the Ark; and - the Great Work of
Alchemy. The Flood has other connotations such as the occlusion of the Sun
representing the “Dying God”, sacrificed for the sins of mankind. In this sense, the
Ark is the symbol of the Cosmic Hieros Gamos, or the mode of passage to the
realm of the “Once and Future King”, Arthur/Arca and the Shepherds of Arcadia.
In our present time, the Christian religion, (and its New Age offshoots), is the
chief proponent of the many End of the World scenarios with which we are most
familiar. However, they do not seem to note that the most important point is that
Jesus definitively connected the so-called End of the World with the story of
Noah, thereby affirming the “Primitive Chiliasm” view. In Matthew, chapter 24,
verses 37 and 38:
As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of man. For just as in
those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and being
given in marriage, until the day when Noah went into the ark, and they did not
know or understand until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the
coming of the Son of man.
In the story of Noah, to which Jesus has directly related the “End of Time”, a
man had a dream, a prophecy (who knows how God spoke to him), and he acted
upon this revelation in a positive way to the saving of himself and his family.
The most important part of the story of Noah is that it was NOT the end of the
world in the sense that the physical earth ceases to exist. Nor did Noah transit
through the Flood to become a “light being”. He built the Ark and survived the
Flood and emerged into a different world. It was the End of Time in the sense that
the world before was altogether different from the world after the Flood. The Earth
continued to exist, and Noah and his metaphorical family, (there were apparently
quite a number of Noah’s all over the globe), came out of the ark into a world so
different that the existence of a rainbow is noted here for the first time as evidence
of this extreme, fundamental change in the nature of reality.
Over and over again, for a thousand years or more, this group of people, or that
one, has decided that the end is coming. They will sell all they own, move out to
the woods or gather on a mountain, or huddle in jungle huts, waiting for God - or
nowadays, the Ets - and when the sun finally rises on the glorious morn of