Revelation 6-8: The Seven Seals

The Lamb opens the first seal on God's scroll, and the first Horseman of the Apocalypse appears: he rides a white horse, carries a bow and wears a crown. He is sent forth to conquer.

The first Horseman is Conquest, who for some reason has been transformed by popular culture into Pestilence, the horseman who spreads disease. (In Gaiman and Pratchett's 'Good Omens', Pestilence has been replaced by Pollution, the former having quit after the discovery of antibiotics.) The original is more likely to represent imperial expansion, the subjugation of smaller nations by an evil empire - Rome.

The Lamb opens the second seal, and the second Horseman appears. He rides a red horse and carries sword. He has the power to take peace from the world, so that men shall kill one another. He is War.

John's Revelation was written shortly after the First Roman-Jewish War, when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple. An extremely traumatic event for the Jews and Jewish Christians. Wars had been a regular feature of Roman life for decades; in the civil war of 68CE, four different emperors were crowned and assassinated.

With the third seal opening, the third Horseman appears. He rides a black horse and carries a pair of balances. A voice cries out, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and wine!” Roman citizens would have recognised this as inflation, caused by food shortage: Famine. The oil and wine are unaffected, because the Horseman only targets essentials. At the time Revelation was written, inflation was escalating throughout the empire.

The fourth seal releases the fourth horseman: Death, who rides a Pale Horse. Hades, the Greek god, has a cameo appearance here: he follows Death. The duo is given the power to kill with sword, with hunger, with disease, and with the beasts of the earth.

As the fifth seal is opened, souls cry out to God for vengeance. They were killed on Earth for holding to God's testimony, and now they want their blood avenged on the earth-dwellers. They are told to wait: the time for vengeance will come.

The sixth seal opens. An earthquake. The sun blackens. The moon reddens. Stars fall. The richest men hide themselves in mountain dens, terrified that the Day of Wrath has come at last.

There is a delay before the the seventh seal can be opened. An angel descends carrying the seal of God; he must seal the foreheads of Gods servants before the end of the world can continue in earnest. The angel seals 12,000 virgin men from each of the 12 tribes of Israel, and a great multitude of people from other nations, who wear white robes and praise God before his throne.

It is time to open the seventh seal...

Revelation 1-5: Ascending to Heaven

Over the past few days I've been re-reading the Book of Revelation. When I read through the Bible a few years ago, I sped through Revelation, not taking it in very well. It's a trippy, angry, difficult book - not one of my biblical favourites. But it has now become extra-relevant to the fiction-in-progress, so here I am, re-reading and organising my thoughts on it.

The book is a letter, a history, and a prophecy of the future; three books in one. Written and circulated around 100CE, Revelation contains references to events and politics of the time, obscured by symbolic imagery and numerology. At this time, Judaism and Christianity were not so thoroughly split: this book, like the Gospel of Matthew, belongs to the Jewish Christian tradition which emphasizes the importance of the tribes of Israel, and looks down on Gentile converts to Pauline Christianity. It is steeped in Jewish lore, chock full of references to other Jewish prophetic works. Hidden meanings and obscure references make it difficult for the modern reader.

In the first chapter, John describes his meeting with Jesus on the isle of Patmos:

"one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and this face was like the sun shining in full strength."

Jesus dictates instructions to the 7 churches of Asia Minor, and commands John to write about his coming visionary experiences in a book. The epistolary prologue doesn't interest me very much. In the section addressed to the church of Pergamon, John's Jesus commends the congregation for holding on to their faith while living in the shadow of 'Satan's Throne': historians believe this refers to the Great Temple of Zeus, the Pergamon Altar, which was once the pride of the city. Early Christians believed the pagan gods were demons tricking humanity away from the true God.

Once John's Jesus is done telling off or congratulating the 7 churches, our narrator turns around and sees a door leading to Heaven. He ascends and sees the throne of God, which is similar in appearance to when it was seen by the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel:

'A throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne. And he who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald... From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and... before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal. And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say,

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty."'

In front of the main God Throne there are 24 smaller thrones, where 'elders' sit, wearing white robes and gold crowns.

At God's right hand there is a scroll, sealed with seven seals, and none could be found to open this scroll containing the future, and our narrator was sad.

“Weep no more", says one of the elders, "the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”

Oh great, thinks our narrator, the conquering Jewish Messiah has come. Those familiar with Jewish lore of the time would have understood the Lion of Judah to be a reference to the expected Messiah, a fierce warrior who would restore Israel to glory.

John looks up, and sees a slain Lamb take the book, causing the divine assembly to burst into song: "for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation," etc.

In the aftermath of Jesus' crucifixion, ideas about the Jewish messiah had to change. The conquering Lion messiah had not come; instead there had been Jesus, a Lamb slain on Passover, a sacrifice whose blood washed away sins and redeemed humanity. John's vision here illustrates these changing ideas, and confirms Jesus the Lamb as identical to the expected Lion. But his conquest is not over the living enemies of Israel, but over Death and Sin. The Messiah has already come.

The Lamb starts opening the seals...

(To be continued...)

Brian Aldiss

Years ago, during my first term at university, when I was just starting to become an avid SF reader, I read Brian Aldiss' novel 'Non-Stop'. It was one of the first SF Masterworks I read, perhaps the 3rd or 4th. I have very fond memories of it; it contributed to my new and burgeoning enthusiasm for SF and the SF Masterworks series (I have now read about 90 of them). I remember describing 'Non-Stop' to someone who'd popped in to visit, and them saying "That's a very Michael book, isn't it."

A few years later, I read 'Greybeard' on a long train journey in America. My copy was a very ugly old copy which had been a duplicate in the university Science Fiction & Fantasy Society's library. The spine was a strange, perhaps light-damaged, grey-purple colour. The cover image was of a deranged-looking old man with a wispy white beard, one squinting eye, one wide eye, and a strange tusk-like growth emerging from his cheek. A raven or crow on his shoulder smiled with a human mouth, and its head was angled in a way that suggested he was turning to a camera. The combination was like an odd family portrait, and I still don't know its significance to the book. It jarred with the story itself, which was far more somber and melancholic, being about old age and infertility. I don't recall any smiling ravens at all.

(I have since replaced both my 'Greybeard' and 'Non-Stop' with nice new editions.)

Aldiss was a guiding Wise Man on my journey to become an Olaf Stapledon super fanboy. He introduced me to Stapledon's magnum opus; as in, he wrote the introduction to it. I reread that introduction many times, trying to sort out my own thoughts on the book: reading it had been like a visionary experience, a religious conversion, a life-changing event. (Those who knew me at that time will likely remember my incessant 'Star Maker' evangelizing.) It is still one of books that has had the biggest impact on me, and Aldiss is caught up in that.

When we read, the writer's voice in our head can become like a companion. And so, Aldiss' friendly, witty voice introduced me to Stapledon's lesser known 'Nebula Maker' and 'Four Encounters', and to Robert Crossley's Stapledon biography, making me feel like I was becoming part of some small esoteric group of Stapledon superfans. In the 'Star Maker' introduction, he lists the little-known 'The Martyrdom of Man' by Winwood Reade as one of Stapledon's influences, and quotes a passage from it, because: "I hope to find others to share my enthusiasm for Winwood Reade."

The oldest book I own is an 1896 edition of 'The Martyrdom of Man'. It is like a prequel to Stapledon's two great works, covering human history from evolutionary origins to the present, with some minor proto-SF speculation about the near future, in a prose style very similar to Stapledon's: sweeping, grand, poetic. I read it while on a two-day boat journey down the Mekong river is Laos: the scenery, the prose, the subject matter, the journey - all made it a very personal experience; visionary, like a mystical pilgrimage. There are passages in which Reade guides you down 'the River of Time'. These are extremely evocative in themselves: reading them while on an actual river with Cretaceous-looking jungle surrounding you is on a whole other level. This experience was Aldiss' fault; he'd recommended it to me.

Later that year I attended my first Worldcon, Loncon3. One of the programme items was Brian Aldiss and David Wingrove in conversation. Aldiss talked about book covers, writing, reading, publishing, drinking with Kingsley Amis, experiences in World War 2, and so much more. At the end he did a signing - the queue was rather large, of course. I had with me the SF Masterworks edition of 'Helliconia' (which I still haven't read because it's an intimidating 1300-page beast), and my 1896 'The Martyrdom of Man'. After we exchanged a few words (me very nervous), he signed both of them, and with the latter scribble it felt like he was approving my membership of the weird group of Stapledon superfans.

Earlier this year I read 'Trillion Year Spree', Aldiss' history of science fiction. I would thrust it into the hands of any SF fan. It is one of my favourite books of the year. It was a joy having that familiar Aldiss voice, the Stapledon-introducing voice, enthusiastically, wittily, knowledgeably chatting away about so many books. His enthusiasm is infectious; I came away from it both more knowledgeable and more enthusiastic about SF than ever before. Seven years after 'Non-Stop' swelled my budding enthusiasm for SF, his work is still making that love grow.

The obituaries in The Bookseller and The Guardian show how obscenely accomplished his career has been, how enormously talented he was. I must read more of his work. When I got home from work last night I scrolled through the titles in Harper's 'Brian Aldiss Collection'. So many books. So many to buy. So many to read. Fantasies, comedies, autobiographies, historical fiction, short stories, "weird" books, essays. So much to discover.

I should probably start with 'Helliconia'.