November 18: Jonestown

Today in 1978, 913 followers of preacher Jim Jones committed enforced, compulsory suicide on his orders. He was paranoid that his movement - having departed the San Francisco Bay Area to seek safety from Armageddon in Guyana - was under threat from a visiting US congressman, whom his followers had just murdered.

November 17: The Franks, the Austro-Hungarians, and the Utopian Socialists

Gregory of Tours died on this date in 594. In his "History of the Franks", Gregory stated that a heretic with powers of prophecy who was executed in Bourges was an Antichrist. Furthermore, the world was set to end 208 years after his writing - meaning sometime between 799 and 806 CE.

On November 17, 1624, Jakob Boehme died. He was a theosophist who claimed both Emperor Rudolph II, and Rudolph's succeeding brother Matthias, were the Antichrist.

And on November 17, 1858, Robert Owen died, a utopian socialist and founder of the city of New Harmony, Indiana. Like Charles Fourier and other prominent utopians, Owen preached an earthly Millennium, and founded separatist communities to help cultivate it. Fourier, for instance, called himself the Messiah of Reason.

November 16: The Nutty MP, and the Nuttier Professor

The French-Canadian separatist and messiah Louis Riel was executed today in 1885. Serving briefly as a Canadian MP, Riel held that mankind was at the dawn of a Third Age, which would begin as soon as papal authority was transferred to him.

Louis Riel's life was dramatized in an exellent graphic novel of that same title by Canadian comics artist Chester Brown.

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Today is also the birthdate of American shaman, professor, and psychonaut Terence McKenna in 1946. In his writings and lectures McKenna managed to associate hallucinogenic drugs with nearly all aspects of experience, even identifying them as the primary driver of human evolution. McKenna’s “novelty theory” held that the universe is a “teleological attractor” which compounds Jungian-type synchronicities in an escalating cascade leading to a singularity. With this theory, McKenna was arguably the first modern popularizer of the 12/21/12 close of the Mayan long-count calendar, claiming that this date was an on-track prediction of his psychedelic eschaton.

(Later, the 2012 date was made even better-known in the final episode of The X Files as the scheduled coming of an alien civilization to Earth. –And while we’re at it, in a very different cult-television-show connection, McKenna himself was the inspiration for the Twin Peaks character Dr. Jacoby.)

McKenna died tragically of brain cancer in 2000.

November 15: Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Kali-Yuga, Hare Krishna

The International Society for Krishna Consciousness was founded on this date in 1966. The Hare Krishnas officially hold that this is the “Kali-Yuga”, or final stage of earthly history according to Hinduism.

November 14: Justinian

The Byzantine Emperor Justinian – a towering figure of the sixth century, who briefly reestablished the collapsed Roman Empire in the west, and laid down the defining principles of European law – died on this date in 565. In Procopius’ notorious The Secret History, filled with details of gossip and intrigues in Justinian’s court, the Emperor was implied to be an Antichrist, born of a human woman impregnated by a demon.

November 13: Y1K, Death of the Red Death, and "2012"

Three quick dates for November 13:

In the year 1004, the Abbo of Fleury died. The monk had written of doomsday predictions he heard preached from the pulpit at Notre Dame de Paris. However, Fleury’s report is one of the very few known instances of apocalyptic fear as Y1K approached. (That is to say, a popular conception that end-of-the-world fears were rampant around the year 1000, appears to be unfounded.)

In 1900, around 100 members of a Russian cult called the Brothers and Sisters of the Red Death committed mass suicide in the belief that the world was about to end.

And, most disturbingly of all, Roland Emmerich’s film 2012 was released to theaters on this date in 2009.

November 12: Charles Manson, and the Jehovah's Witnesses Give up the Ghost

Charles Manson was born on this date in 1934. As the leader of a small cult of personality in southern California in the late 1960s, Manson became an American icon of psychopathy during a series of unapologetic courtroom antics while on trial with his followers for two shocking mass-murders. (Adding to his notoriety, Manson's acolyte Squeaky Fromme was later jailed for attempting, ineptly, to assassinate President Gerald Ford for no particular reason in 1975.)

Manson had taught his Family about a coming "Helter-Skelter" (misspelled, in blood, as "Healter-Skelter" by Tex Watkins on the refrigerator of victim Sharon Tate). This apocalyptic race war, named after a Beatles song, was supposed to be triggered by an album Manson would record with Beach Boy Dennis Wilson, which would lure sexually-liberated white women away from the Haight-Ashbury and down to Death Valley where Manson held court. The exodus of white women would so infuriate the black men who had been having sex with them, that a worldwide race war would erupt whose only white survivors would be the Manson Family, hiding in an underground city beneath Death Valley whose existence Manson postulated. Presuming the inferiority of nonwhites, Manson claimed his Family could go on to rule the world after other white people had been destroyed.

When this album of Manson's began failing to work out (he had actually done a small amount of recording with Dennis Wilson), he ordered the Tate and LaBianca murders on August 8 and 9, 1969. Attempting crudely to make the murders look like the work of blacks, Manson believed these atrocities would ignite his hoped-for race war. Manson and his followers were arrested 14 weeks later, on December 1.

As a note, Manson generally denies he ever claimed any of the above, insisting his race-war theories were invented by Los Angeles District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi. However, Manson's rambling diatribes (for instance with talk-show host Tom Snyder) are so lacking in an alternate explanation of the Family's activities - not to mention the fact that Manson is cheekily evasive and pseudo-wise to a point of outright incoherency - that if anything, his antics lend Bugliosi's account more plausibility.

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After a series of failed predictions of the world's end - including forecasts going back to the 19th century, as well as for 1914, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1941, 1975, 1984, and 1994 - the Jehovah's Witnesses announced on this date in 1995 their new lack of expectation that the apocalypse was particularly near.

November 11: Martin Luther Redux

On October 31 I mentioned Martin Luther's posting of the 95 Theses, which led to centuries of European wars often seen as apocalyptic at the time. But November 10, 1483, is the birthdate of the man himself - and his personal views are worth noting for their apocalyptic leanings as well.

Though Luther dismissed the Book of Revelation as "neither apostolic nor prophetic", he wrote, "For my part, I am sure the Day of Judgment is just around the corner. It doesn't matter that we don't know the precise day.... But it is certain that time is now at an end."

At another time, Luther predicted the end of the world would come within 300 years at most. Throughout his mature life, of course, many considered Luther himself to be the Antichrist.

November 8: Martin and Milton

On November 8, 397, Martin of Tours died. He had claimed the Antichrist was alive on Earth, and would begin his premillennial reign sometime prior to 400 CE.
And in 1674, John Milton died. With his contemporaries George Fox (author of the anti-Catholic "Book of Martyrs"), John Bunyan ("Pilgrim's Progress"), and Isaac Newton, Milton suspected the Pope was the Antichrist.

November 6: Militia Activist William Cooper; and Barack is Back

On November 6, 2001, right-wing militia activist William Cooper - who also hosted the short-wave radio program Hour of the Time and Mystery Babylon - was shot and killed at his home in Eagar, AZ by sheriff's deputies attempting to serve an arrest warrant for tax evasion. Among Cooper's UFO and conspiracy theories was the prediction that the end of the world would occur in the year 2000.

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Also, many Americans may believe today marks a milestone in the progress toward Armageddon, as Barack Obama is re-elected President of the United States (see Jan. 20)

November 5: Earth Abides

On November 5, 1950, a radio dramatization aired of "Earth Abides", George R. Stewart's classic last-man-on-earth novel which had first been published the year before.

Earth Abides (in two half-hour broadcasts)

November 4: Elijah is Hiding in an Eighteenth-Century French Forest

On November 4, 1792, the Messiah was born in rural France. At least the priest at Saint-Jean Bonnefonds declared as much, such that by November 1794 villagers had begun abandoning their homes to await Elijah in the forests to lead them to Jerusalem.

November 3: Tycho Brahe and Superova SN1572

Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe died in 1601 after refusing for too long to leave a wild dinner party for a bathroom break. He suffered a kidney rupture which became infected and killed him after 11 days. (Some have theorized the kidney damage could have been primarily from other causes, including poisoning.)

As a younger man, Brahe famously lost his nose in a duel fought over a mathematical formula, and wore a gold one in its place.

The greatest practical astronomer of his day, Brahe's accurate measurements allowed Johannes Kepler to prove the Copernican model of the solar system, and derive from it the laws of planetary motion which would inspire Newton's law of gravity decades later. Brahe's astronomical findings were considered so significant that the King of Denmark granted him the entire island of Hven to build an observation center.

Upon sighting a supernova which erupted overnight on this date in Cassiopeia on November 3 in 1572 - an unprecedented event - Brahe had said it must be a sign of the Second Coming.

November 2: Dame Christabel Pankhurst

Today in 1917 the UK's Balfour Declaration made support of a Jewish state in Palestine into official policy. Dame Christabel Pankhurst, a prominent activist and suffragette, saw the coming of a new Israel as prophetic. She also identified the Bolshevik state with the Satanic forces of Gog and Magog, while announcing "the promised return of Jesus as King of Kings and Lord of Lords."

In later years, still attempting to connect world events with Biblical prophecy, Pankhurst identified Mussolini as the Antichrist. (Informed of this by some Belgian visitors, the attribution visibly pleased Mussolini.)

November 1: Day of the Dead, and Day of Wrath

Today, in addition to being the Day of the Dead, was the date in 1265 when Thomas of Celano died. This Franciscan monk authored the "Dies Irae", or Day of Wrath, a poem on Judgment Day which was later adopted as a Gregorian chant and incorporated into the Roman Requiem Mass.

The "Dies Irae" melody has made a number of noteworthy cameos in classical music, including in the work of Berlioz ("Symphonie Fantastique") and Liszt ("Totentanz"). A more modern appearance was in the opening titles of the horror film The Shining:




On a lighter note, November 1 also saw the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, killing as many as 100,000 people - but inspiring Voltaire's rollicking paen to pessimism Candide.

October 31: Martin Luther's Launch of Protestantism

On Halloween of 1517, Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses against the Catholic Church, launching the Protestant revolution. With his movement came a series of wars whose unfolding in Europe over the succeeding century and more were widely seen as apocalyptic.

October 30: Mars Attacks!

October 30 saw the invasion of Earth by Mars in 1938, beginning with an attack on New Jersey as reported by Orson Welles by radio broadcast.

October 28: 1000 Years of Christian Rule; and Hyoo-Go

It's hard to trace the official adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire to one event, but a good candidate is the Battle of the Milvian Bridge on October 28 - in the year 312. On that day, Constantine the Great consolidated control over the empire by defeating the rival Emperor Maxentius. On the eve of battle, Constantine had received a vision in which he was promised victory if he used the cross as his battle standard.

1000 years later, beliefs sprang up that one millennium of Christian rule meant Christ would soon be returning to Earth.

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A Korean Christian group named Mission for the Coming Days believed that Hyoo-Go - the Rapture - would occur in 1992. They placed billboard ads and a spread in USA Today on October 28 of that year announcing the end of the world.

October 26: 1895, Predicted Early in the Century

Robert Reid of Erie, Pennsylvania - one of the numerous early-nineteenth-century American doomsday preachers - held that the return of Christ would fall in 1895.

October 25: Buffalo Bill's House of Yahweh

Yisrayl "Buffalo Bill" Hawkins founded the House of Yahweh in Abilene in 1974. Hawkins claimed that unless Biblical law were universally obeyed, a nuclear war would kill 80% of humanity sometime between this month of October 2000 and midway through the year after. Later the date was advanced to September 12, 2006, June 12, 2007, October 13, 2007, and June 12, 2008.

In the latter 2000s, several allegations of child mistreatment were made against the House of Yahweh's leadership. Yisrayl pled guilty to child labor violations in exchange for dismissal of bigamy charges. The church's second in command, Yedidiyah Hawkins, is now serving a 30-year sentence for sexual abuse of his stepdaughter beginning when she was 8. And one HOY member pled guilty to criminal negligence for killing her 7-year-old daughter in an attempt to perform a home surgery.

The church was formed as a spliter group from Herbert Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God (see Jan. 7).