TOP 10 MYTHOLOGIES

(SPECIAL MENTION: APOCALYPTIC RANKINGS – COMPLETE RANKINGS)

How do my mythology special mentions rack up against my top ten mythologies when ranking them for their apocalypses?

Not too differently as it turns out. The top ten mythologies remain pretty intact ranked by apocalypse, scoring my top seven places ranked by apocalypse. Three mythology special mentions round out the top ten apocalyptic rankings, with two more scoring higher than my least apocalyptic top ten mythologies.

 

SCORE:

3 SPECIAL MENTIONS – TOP TEN APOCALYPTIC RANKINGS

(5 SPECIAL MENTIONS – EQUAL TO OR GREATER THAN TOP 10 MYTHOLOGIES)

 

Anyway, here’s the complete apocalyptic rankings for my top ten mythologies and special mention entries.

 

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

(1) BIBLICAL – APOCALYPSE

 

Same top spot

 

(2) NORSE – RAGNAROK & GOTTERDAMERUNG

 

Up one place from third place in general rankings

 

(3) NATIVE AMERICAN (LAKOTA)  – GHOST DANCE

 

Up six places (!) from ninth place in general rankings

 

 

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

(4) HINDU – KALI YUGA

 

Up three places from seventh place in general rankings

 

(5) MESO-AMERICAN (AZTEC) – FIFTH WORLD

 

Up three places from eighth place in general rankings

 

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

 

(6) MIDDLE EASTERN (BABYLO-SUMERIAN)

 

Same sixth place as in general rankings

 

(7) CELTIC (ARTHURIAN)

 

Down three places from fourth place in general rankings

 

So far, so good – seven of my top ten mythologies reign supreme for apocalypses, although in different order to my general rankings. Biblical mythology is still in top spot with the trope namer. Norse mythology bumps up one place with Raganrok or Gotterdammerung.

 

Funnily enough, Middle Eastern Mythology stays in the same sixth place it has in general rankings, despite the lack of a distinctive apocalypse. Mystery Babylon will do that for you. Arthurian legend drops down a few places – the Battle of Camlann is a decent apocalypse, but it just doesn’t hold up against the other top ten entres. The big shake-ups from general rankings – and I mean up, as they rise from their general rankings – are Native American mythology with the Ghost Dance, Hindu mythology with the Kali Yuga, and Aztec mythology with the Fifth World.

 

But now, three special mention entries rank in the top ten apocalyptic rankings.

 

(8) ZEN

 

After enlightenment comes the apocalypse!

Yes, I’m as surprised as you are that Zen not only has its apocalyptic elements but that it would outrank all other special mentions and rival my top ten mythologies in apocalyptic rankings.

Well, perhaps not so much Zen itself – although you could argue that its goal of enlightenment is something of a personal apocalypse, in which the way you see yourself and the world is destroyed and remade (or deconstructed and reconstructed) – but Buddhism in general.

There’s the future Buddha Maitreya, a messianic figure to herald a new age in last days of the old world – as well as the Three Ages of Buddha and the Sermon of the Seven Suns.

 

(9) ATLANTIS & BERMUDA TRIANGLE

 

Again, I’m surprised that Atlantis should score high for apocalyptic rankings, but you have to admit that Atlantis has one of the most apocalyptic scenarios of total destruction in what might be described (and capitalized) as the Deluge.

The Deluge is like the Flood in Biblical (and other) mythology, both deserving of special notice among apocalypses in mythology. Of course, I don’t think the Flood is typically considered in the same vein as the various apocalypses in the Bible, let alone the Book of Apocalypse, but I think it should be considered in much the same effect, albeit not as the same eschatological end times.

The Atlantean Deluge on the other hand does present as the apocalyptic end of Atlantis – and as distinct from the Biblical Flood, the wrath of the gods is sudden and without any saving ark, although there may have been lucky escapes (and escapees). The Deluge has been a consistent model for sudden destruction or nemesis after hubris ever since – most notably, at least for me, the destruction of Numenor as depicted by Tolkien in his Lord of the Rings mythos.

Hence, I place it in my top ten apocalyptic rankings. Atlantis even has post-apocalyptic lore, if you include it as a recurring fantasy of a submarine kingdom with aquatic inhabitants.

Bonus points for the Bermuda Triangle, which often seems like an apocalypse in, well, a triangle. There’re at least some fictional scenarios that feature it in an apocalyptic or semi-apocalyptic fashion – perhaps most famously in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, albeit it heralded things to come by disgorging its disappearances.

 

(10) UFO

 

I’m even more surprised to see UFOs score high for apocalyptic rankings, let alone the top ten. However, not only are there actual UFO religions, but some of them have end-time scenarios. I mean it’s cargo cult or rapture kind of stuff but still. For that matter, I’m prepared to include technological singularity – dubbed the Rapture for nerds – in this entry but in that case we’re the UFOs. Well, us – or our transhuman descendants or artificial intelligence successors.

And of course, there’s all the UFO end-time scenarios of science fiction, under the broad rubric of alien invasion.

 

 

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

By definition, my wild-tier rankings are where it’s apocalypses gone wild – not so much any actual apocalypses but more apocalyptic elements or features.

 

(11) TAROT

 

It’s the apocalypse in a deck of cards!

Overlapping with its large number of chthonic or underworld cards, there are its cards of apocalypse or apocalyptic figures, such as the penultimate card of Judgement – followed by the ultimate card of the World. Indeed, the chthonic cards are pretty much the same cards as the apocalyptic cards.

One can argue that the Fool’s mythic journey through the cards is as much an apocalypse as it is a descent into and return from the underworld – the Fool of the Tarot as St John of Patmos, perhaps.

 

(12) CONSPIRACY THEORIES

 

Quite a few conspiracy theories have apocalyptic elements, even involving the conspirators as potentially unleashing apocalyptic forces. Sometimes the conspiracy theory is a conspiracy for apocalypse…

Do you really think the Illuminati won’t stop at a little apocalypse to get what they want?!  Of course not. Indeed, there’s even a term for it, which I know thanks to the Illuminatus Trilogy – immanentize the Eschaton.

 

(13) CLASSICAL

 

(14) EGYPTIAN

 

(15) AFRO-AMERICAN (VOODOO)

 

While these three entries from my top ten mythologies arguably have apocalyptic elements, they lack definitive apocalypses and hence rank below my top ten apocalyptic rankings.

 

(16) MAGIC

 

Magic comes next among the special mentions in my wild-tier rankings, because the apocalypse tends to be magic.

Magic doesn’t so much have its own apocalypse as it is a feature of apocalypses in general. That is – apocalypses are magic, have magic, or are source of magic. Sometimes the apocalypse is a matter of the magic going away – but perhaps more usually coming back, with a bang!

 

(17) WITCHCRAFT

 

Much the same as magic – witchcraft has tended to be seen as a function of apocalypse or as its agents.

 

(18) DRAGONS

 

It’s fire-breathing, winged apocalypse!

Dragons are often depicted as apocalyptic beasts.

No, not the Beast of the Apocalypse. Well, yes, also the Beast of the Apocalypse as that sixy beast is dragon-like in depiction and in turn serves the actual Dragon of the Apocalypse – but literal monstrous beasts that bring the world’s doom or are a harbinger of the end times. “This is the kind of beast who gives the gods themselves nightmares, and in action it’s liable to be a veritable engine of destruction, trampling over mortals, gods, and anything else that gets in its way”.

Apart from the dragon-like Beast of the Apocalypse and the apocalyptic Great Red Dragon himself, there’s the Midgard Serpent and Nidhoggr, the latter the dragon that gnaws the roots of the World Tree.

 

(19) GIANTS

 

It’s a gigantic apocalypse!

Similar to dragons, giants were often depicted or seen as apocalyptic beings – as indeed they were in Norse mythology.

Although not quite up there with the Great Red Dragon or similar draconic beings in the Book of Apocalypse, the reference to Gog and Magog was interpreted as apocalyptic gigantic beings.

 

(20) GHOSTS

 

It’s a ghost apocalypse!

Ghosts or the dead are a recurring feature of mythic apocalypses, even in the Biblical Apocalypse with its resurrection and judgment of the dead. They play a larger role in Ragnarok with the army of the dead being arrayed against the gods – and of course in the Ghost Dance.

 

(21) VAMPIRES

 

“The world is a vampire, sent to drain”.

But seriously, vampires are essentially a subset of ghosts or the dead as a recurring feature of mythic apocalypses…only the hungrier – or thirstier – dead.

 

(22) LYCANTHROPES

 

The apocalypse as dog days, perhaps? Werewolves make it into my apocalyptic tier from the role of wolves in Ragnarok. Also, the use of the term werewolf for the last ditch scorched earth German resistance to the Allies in the apocalyptic last days of the Second World War, albeit more as propaganda than reality.

 

(23) LEGENDARY CREATURES

 

Unless you count the various apocalyptic figures of other mythologies – particularly those apocalyptic beasts in the Bible – as legendary creatures.

 

(24) PAGANISM

 

Yeah, contrary to its top spot for special mentions in general rankings, paganism ranks pretty low for apocalypses. The apocalyptic elements of paganism are those of the mythologies of its original forms, foremost among them Norse mythology.

 

(25) SHAMANISM

 

Shamanism arguably has apocalyptic elements but more in the original meaning of apocalypse as revelation, on the personal level of the shaman – a dark night of the soul amidst visions and voices (and often psychedelic drugs), some of them terrifying, which is ultimately redemptive or transformative.

 

(26) FAIRIES

 

An exception to the general rule that sees fairy folklore rank close to the Celtic mythology or Arthurian legend that it overlaps.

Yeah, there’s not really any fairy apocalypse. Well, except perhaps in fantasy fiction like Mark Chadbourn’s Age of Misrule series.

 

(27) CRYPTIDS

 

Yeah – there’s no cryptid apocalypse or apocalyptic elements. We’re getting to the bottom now but cryptids still seem vaguely more apocalyptic than the next entries.

 

(28) URBAN LEGENDS

 

Yeah – there’s not too many urban legends involving the apocalypse or any apocalyptic elements. Unless you see the whole Book of Apocalypse as just one big ancient urban legend.

 

(29) DISCORDIANISM

 

There’s few apocalyptic elements in Discordianism – unless you count the fictional version of Discordianism in the Illuminati Trilogy, although there they are fighting against the secret societies or conspiracies that are bent on bringing about the apocalypse – or immanentizing the Eschaton.

If you expand this entry to (other) parody religions, then the Church of the Sub-Genius definitely has its apocalypse and they can help you avoid it – or triple your money back!

 

(30) TANTRA

 

It’s a tantric apocalypse!

Or not, as I don’t know of any apocalyptic elements to tantra. Although it is fun to speculate about what a s€xual or tantric apocalypse would involve!