The Revelation - Cast, Characters, Plot

I’m writing a novel called The Wars that were in Heaven (out in Autumn, it’s #3 of the Lemurian Pushback series).

The main chunk of the plot is that the biblical book of Revelation is actually a programme, analogous to a phone app, that has been installed in the reflective part of the human mind through us having been exposed to its characters since childhood.

Various dubious extraterrestrial agencies have decided to “run the program” by engineering situations on earth, such that it appears to the average human mind that the Revelation is coming true. This will activate a vast reservoir of libidinal energy in the human psyche, driving our species into huge upheaval but potentially, after much strife, with a salvific result.

Anyway, whilst writing, I had to go slowly through Revelation, pinning down the various characters that John describes in his vision. And I thought to put a list of them out here. Note that events may take place on the microcosmic (relating to the individual) or macrocosmic (relating to the world) level, or frequently both.

Here goes…

• The Dragon - libidinal fire or kundalini

• The first Beast - the human ego, or the force that creates it

• The second Beast - the persona or social media avatar, or the force that creates it - worshipping the image of the first beast

• The woman clothed with the sun - the force behind Nature in its outward-facing aspect

• The Whore - the force that drives libido into outward sexual expression

• The Lamb - the redeemed ego that drives libido inward into spiritual activity

• The Four Beasts in Heaven - the four elements in the array of Gnostic “fixed cross,” which hold the ego firm so that it can’t escape and must self-examine to the point of its redemption.

• The Twenty-four Elders - the twin aspects of personality symbolised by each astrological house when they have been pruned back by experience

• The Kings - the nation states of the world, embodiments of hierarchical power fuelled by libido

• The Merchants - well, merchants. Commercial classes.

• The Seven Churches which are in Asia - the 7 somatic centres known as chakras

• The Seven Seals on the Book - formulae for opening the 7 chakras

• The various plagues, earthquakes, blackenings, floods and other calamities - images of the negative-seeming effects from the perspective of the ego as it undergoes purgation - analogous to the Nigredo phases of alchemy

• Harvesting of the wheat and wine of God - the extraction of the essences of the human psyche, analogous to the sublimation or Albedo phases in alchemy

• The Whore drunk on the Blood of the Saints - that libidinal energy was meant for doing spiritual work, bitch!

• The Head of the Beast that dies but comes back to Life - the spiritual ego

• The New Jerusalem - the solar body (microcosm). Some form of idealised society (macrocosm), possibly relating to blockchain, for it allows no false transactions and keeps an eternal record.

• The Number of the Beast which is the number of a man, 666 - number puzzles, usually relating to triangular and hexagonal numbers, abound throughout prominent parts of the Old and New Testaments. 666 is the 36th triangular number and 36 (six squared and thus relating to the three dimensional realm of six directions) generally relates to the human ego before purgation. The next whole number, 37, generally relates to the redeemed ego, symbolised in the New Testament by Jesus Christ, whose various names in Greek numberology are riddled with instances of 37 and its multiples. In the Old Testament, the first verse of Genesis (in Hebrew) is another famous instance of the interplay between the 36th and 37th triangular numbers.