Strange title: The Infant’s Skull or The End of the World: A Tale of the Millennium. In the work, Eugene Sui (1804-1857) recounts the panic that enveloped many European Christians at the close of the first millennium C.E. (A.D.). Clergy had reiterated St. John the Divine’s prophecy of the world’s end. They believed they were about to witness the end times 1,000 year after Christ’s birth. The gullible faithful gave away or sold their stuff. Many just stopped farming in anticipation of the Apocalypse.
“In 999, the expectation of the end of the world had put a stop to work; all the fields except those belonging to the ecclesiastical seigneurs, lay fallow. The formidable famine of the year 1000 was then the immediate result, and that was followed by a wide-spread mortality.”*
Simpler times? Couldn’t happen today, right?
Think Y2K; think year 2000; think Millennium Parties. Think prophecies of 1999. Think Prince’s song 1999. Think an April 26, 1999, report from Reuters:
“QUEBEC CITY - More mass suicides linked to the Order of the Solar Temple doomsday cult, implicated in 74 deaths in Canada and Europe in the past five years, are a real possibility as the millennium nears, police said.
"Yes, there are Solar Temple members remaining in Quebec. There may be about 30 of them left," Officer Pierre Robichaud of the Surete du Quebec provincial police said.”**
In 1000 the world did end for those who succumbed to virtually self-induced famine. Then a growing anger against the clergy’s unfounded predictions of the Apocalypse eventually translated into persecution of and mob violence against Jews in Europe. The clergy needed a scapegoat, and they also needed to distract their “faithful” from their mistaken prophecies. When January 1, 1000, came and went without the Second Coming, they explained that the 1,000 years mentioned by St. John the Divine really meant a thousand years after Christ’s death and not after his birth. Look out for the year 1032 or 1033!
And, of course, those years have come and gone, the rumors about them now long forgotten. Earth is still here (Look down; you’ll see it).
Acting on rumor can be hazardous to one’s health or, as in the case of those Jews who were persecuted between 1000 and 1032 C.E., to others’ health.
Unfortunately, rumor draws as the Sirens drew sailors toward hazardous rocks. No one, of course, has the ability to check the veracity of every story, but all of us have the capacity to think before we act. That we live more than a millennium from that first apocalyptic warning did not prevent some, such as those in the Order of the Solar Temple and other cult members, from acting in the same frenzied mode that people exhibited in 999. Are the amygdalae so in control that we can’t work our way to reasoned action? The next time you hear that a passing comet, the Solar System’s syzygy, or an anniversary of some significant event indicates some dire consequence for you personally or humanity in general, remember those who abandoned their farms as they awaited the Apocalypse of the year 1000. And the next time you see the rumor mill in action against an individual, pause before you join the mob to persecute the innocent.
Tend to your farm.
* Eugene Sue, The Infant’s Skull, Or, The End of the World: A Tale for the Millennium, translated by Daniel De Leon. English translation. New York Labor News Company, 1904. Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31759/31759-h/31759-h.htm#CHAPTER_Ia
** Patrick White, Reuters online at
https://www.culteducation.com/group/1158-solar-temple/19541-solar-temple-cult-worries-rise-as-millennium-nears.html
“In 999, the expectation of the end of the world had put a stop to work; all the fields except those belonging to the ecclesiastical seigneurs, lay fallow. The formidable famine of the year 1000 was then the immediate result, and that was followed by a wide-spread mortality.”*
Simpler times? Couldn’t happen today, right?
Think Y2K; think year 2000; think Millennium Parties. Think prophecies of 1999. Think Prince’s song 1999. Think an April 26, 1999, report from Reuters:
“QUEBEC CITY - More mass suicides linked to the Order of the Solar Temple doomsday cult, implicated in 74 deaths in Canada and Europe in the past five years, are a real possibility as the millennium nears, police said.
"Yes, there are Solar Temple members remaining in Quebec. There may be about 30 of them left," Officer Pierre Robichaud of the Surete du Quebec provincial police said.”**
In 1000 the world did end for those who succumbed to virtually self-induced famine. Then a growing anger against the clergy’s unfounded predictions of the Apocalypse eventually translated into persecution of and mob violence against Jews in Europe. The clergy needed a scapegoat, and they also needed to distract their “faithful” from their mistaken prophecies. When January 1, 1000, came and went without the Second Coming, they explained that the 1,000 years mentioned by St. John the Divine really meant a thousand years after Christ’s death and not after his birth. Look out for the year 1032 or 1033!
And, of course, those years have come and gone, the rumors about them now long forgotten. Earth is still here (Look down; you’ll see it).
Acting on rumor can be hazardous to one’s health or, as in the case of those Jews who were persecuted between 1000 and 1032 C.E., to others’ health.
Unfortunately, rumor draws as the Sirens drew sailors toward hazardous rocks. No one, of course, has the ability to check the veracity of every story, but all of us have the capacity to think before we act. That we live more than a millennium from that first apocalyptic warning did not prevent some, such as those in the Order of the Solar Temple and other cult members, from acting in the same frenzied mode that people exhibited in 999. Are the amygdalae so in control that we can’t work our way to reasoned action? The next time you hear that a passing comet, the Solar System’s syzygy, or an anniversary of some significant event indicates some dire consequence for you personally or humanity in general, remember those who abandoned their farms as they awaited the Apocalypse of the year 1000. And the next time you see the rumor mill in action against an individual, pause before you join the mob to persecute the innocent.
Tend to your farm.
* Eugene Sue, The Infant’s Skull, Or, The End of the World: A Tale for the Millennium, translated by Daniel De Leon. English translation. New York Labor News Company, 1904. Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31759/31759-h/31759-h.htm#CHAPTER_Ia
** Patrick White, Reuters online at
https://www.culteducation.com/group/1158-solar-temple/19541-solar-temple-cult-worries-rise-as-millennium-nears.html
RSS Feed