The Hero with a Thousand Faces

As the created form of the individual must dissolve, so that of the universe also:

When it is known that after the lapse of a hundred thousand years the cycle is to be renewed, the gods called Loka-byūhas, inhabi­tants of a heaven of sensual pleasure, wander about through the world, with hair let down and flying in the wind, weeping and wiping away their tears with their hands, and with their clothes red and in great disorder. And thus they make announcement:

“Sirs, after the lapse of a hundred thousand years, the cycle is to be renewed; this world will be destroyed; also the mighty ocean will dry up; and this broad earth, and Sumeru, the monarch of the mountains, will be burnt up and destroyed — up to the Brahma-world will the destruction of the world extend. Therefore, sirs, cultivate friendliness; cultivate compassion, joy, and indifference; wait on your mothers; wait on your fathers; and honor your elders among your kinsfolk.”

This is called the Cyclic-Uproar.^[7]

Figure 81. World-end: Rain Serpent and Tiger-claw Goddess (ink on tree-bark paper, Mayan, Central America, c. a.d. 1200–1250)

The Mayan version of the world-end is represented in an illustration covering the last page of the Dresden Codex.^[8] This ancient manuscript records the cycles of the planets and from those deduces calculations of vast cosmic cycles. The serpent numbers which appear toward the close of the text (so-called because of the appearance in them of a serpent symbol) represent world periods of some thirty-four thousand years — twelve and a half million days — and these are recorded again and again.

In these well-nigh inconceivable periods, all the smaller units may be regarded as coming at last to a more or less exact close. What matter a few score years one way or the other in this virtual eternity? Finally, on the last page of the manuscript, is depicted the Destruction of the World, for which the highest numbers have paved the way. Here we see the rain serpent, stretching across the sky, belching forth torrents of water. Great streams of water gush from the sun and moon. The old goddess, she of the tiger claws and forbidding aspect, the malevolent patroness of floods and cloudbursts, overturns the bowl of the heavenly waters. The crossbones, dread symbol of death, decorate her skirt, and a writhing snake crowns her head. Below with downward-pointed spear, symbolic of the universal destruction, the black god stalks abroad, a screeching owl raging on his fearsome head. Here, indeed, is portrayed with graphic touch the final all-engulfing cataclysm.^[9]

Figure 82. Ragnarök: Fenrir the Wolf Devouring Odin (carved stone, Viking, Britain, c. a.d. 1000)

One of the strongest representations appears in the Poetic Edda of the ancient Vikings. Othin (Wotan), the chief of the gods, has asked to know what will be the doom of himself and his pantheon, and the “Wise Woman,” a personification of the World Mother herself, Destiny articulate, lets him hear:^[10]

Brothers shall fight and fell each other,

And sisters’ sons shall kinship stain;

Hard is it on earth, with mighty whoredom;

Ax-time, sword-time, shields are sundered,

Wind-time, wolf-time, ere the world falls;

Nor ever shall men each other spare.

In the land of the giants, Jotunheim, a fair, red rooster shall crow; in Valhalla the rooster Golden Comb; a rust-red bird in Hell. The dog Garm at the cliff-cave, the entrance to the world of the dead, shall open his great jaws and howl. The earth shall tremble, the crags and trees be torn asunder, the sea gush forth upon the land. The fetters of those monsters who were chained back in the beginning shall all burst: Fenris-Wolf shall run free, and advance with lower jaw against the earth, upper against the heavens (“he would gape yet more if there were room for it”); fires shall blaze from his eyes and nostrils. The world-enveloping serpent of the cosmic ocean shall rise in giant wrath and advance beside the wolf upon the land, blowing venom, so that it shall sprinkle all the air and water. Naglfar shall be loosed (the ship made of dead men’s nails) and this shall be the transport of the giants. Another ship shall sail with the inhabitants of hell. And the people of fire shall advance from the south.