So: how does it feel at World’s End?

Let me take a first stab at indicating — by analogy — the level of passion involved:

Cox writes of prophecy, Sylvia Plath of electroshock treatment. In her poem, The Hanging Man:

By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.

I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.

And her description of the same experience in her novel The Bell Jar is no less, perhaps even more powerful — note also the “end times” reference:

I shut my eyes.

There was a brief silence, like an indrawn breath.

Then something bent down and took hold of me and shook me like the end of the world. Whee-ee-ee-ee-ee, it shrilled, through an air crackling with blue light, and with each flash a great jolt drubbed me till I thought my bones would break and the sap fly out of me like a split plant.

Let me suggest to you:

Many IS members feel they have been shaken “like the end of the world” and live and breathe in “an air crackling with blue light”.

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The illustration at the head of this post is one of many from The Beatus of Facundus, itself one of many brilliantly illustrated versions of Beatus of Liebana‘s commentary on Revelation. I was first exposed to Beatus by an article Umberto Eco wrote for FMR magazine. Eco also mentions the Beatus in Name of the Rose, and indeed wrote a most desirable book on the topic.

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