As we enter the third millennium, will the heavens open or will some nutter detonate an explosive device next to you? Charl Blignaut grapples with what the year 2000 means
At the start of my research for this article, I eagerly typed the word “millennium” into a standard Internet search engine, hoping that it would be of some assistance. Within 30 seconds I was offered more than 11 000 sites to visit.
The fact that many of them turned out to be either the home pages of raving lunatics (everyone’s a prophet) or of business types with packages like The Millennium Egyptian Connection (flights, cruises and hotels are being booked now!) to sell is not important here. What is important is that by the time you are reading this, the same search engine will probably offer you 12 000-odd sites with something to say and/or sell about the millennium.
Quite understandably, global interest in the millennium is escalating daily — even in the face of much cynicism about it being all hype and no substance. At the very least, there is the biggest party in history to organise, outfits to design, conspiracy theories to indulge in and some sort of threshold to step across.
The turn of a century is one thing, even the turn of a decade. Hell, even just a normal new year is a considerable day on the annual calendar, with people drawing up resolutions and taking stock of their year. But the turn of a millennium — it’s not everyone who’s around for the turn of a millennium.
There’s just no way of getting around this thing — whether you believe that you will wake up the next morning with a hangover and make a cup of coffee or, like one of my new friends on the Internet, you believe the heavens will unleash a conglomerate of evil Middle Eastern gentlemen ripe to unleash chemical weapons into the stratosphere or, for that matter, be abducted by grey aliens with big, glowy eyes or simply just witness the second coming of Christ.
The hype is not going to go away, not now that it has pervaded contemporary culture. Millennium fever has hit. It’s in the sci-fi chic pervading the catwalks, in the pierced bodies and shaved heads of trendy kids on the street; it’s in The X-Files on your TV set, in the renewed sense of alienation and in the wrap-around eyes of the latest accepted image of the alien. It’s in the influx of astrologers and cults in society; of weird stories in your magazines; it’s in the technological revolution of the modern age and it’s most certainly on the Internet. It’s in the newspaper you’re holding in your hands. It’s too late. The millennium is already happening.
The millennium already happened
Or, to be precise, the millennium has already happened. Perhaps we should deal with the small matter of the date of the millennium. By now we all know that 2001 is the actual date of the new millennium — we start counting from one, not from zero. But does it matter? The date is anyway determined by the birth of Jesus Christ and any historian will tell you that Christ was, in fact, born somewhere between the years 7AD and 4AD.
King Herod was, according to the Bible, alive when Jesus was born. Herod died in 4 AD. If we are to be sticklers about it all, the millennium happened in the early to mid-1990s and so we already know that, like the year 999, the Messiah did not put in an appearance, the world did not come to an end.
Unless you’re a suicidal comet-gazer, the date is not really the issue. The issue is our collective sense of anticipation; the cultural phenomenon that the new millennium represents.
After all, no amount of logical thinking, not even a presidential decree changing the date of Christ’s birth, is going to alter the fact that virtually every respectable hotel, restaurant or resort on the planet is already fully booked for December 31 1999.
The year 2000 is a relatively arbitrary point in time chosen by us as a significant moment to take stock of where the world is at. It’s a concept on to which we project our collective energies; a time of renewal and/or destruction. 2000 is the great unknown; a catalyst that makes the idea of transition possible, something to believe in. For more than 500 years psychics, seers, pundits, prophets and even American presidents have been transfixed by the year 2000 as a cultural barometer that will test mankind’s faith. The world is not a pretty place: we need a saviour. The millennium is informed by tensions that are far more subtle than just apocalypse or utopia.
This may sound like a load of bollocks to people like Bruce Handy, who recently wrote a story in Time magazine calling the millennium “the turn-off of the century”.
“What if they gave a millennium and nobody came?” asked Handy. “It’s basically just hype.” Surely that’s the point — that the unprecedented hype around the millennium is a phenomenon in itself. More likely than a catastrophic biblical doomsday is the possibility that some nut somewhere will try to end the world — precisely because of the hype.
Aum Holy Truth leader Shoko Asahara tried to kickstart Armageddon with his sarin gas attacks in Tokyo’s subways. He prophesied the end and then tried to make sure it happened. That was in 1995. When a single date like 2000 is subject to such build-up, something’s likely to go down. But what? The logical solution would be to look at previous millennial shifts.
Millennia past
It’s not as if we exactly have much of a frame of reference: 1 000 years ago the printing press was not yet invented. Save a few monks, writing was not yet widespread and so we are left with precious little information about previous millennia.
In the medieval year 999, doomsday prophecies were, according to several historians, all the rage. Particularly in Europe, with the gradual supremacy of Christianity and the occupation of Jerusalem by the church, it was widely believed that the year 1000 marked the return of Christ and there was a marked rise in pilgrimages to Jerusalem and an increase in pious activity, particularly by kings and leaders. Sacrifices were made and donations freely given.
“People sold off their possessions and dug themselves in graves to wait,” tells Cape Town astrologer Rod Suskin, “Of course, they emerged rather sheepishly the next day.”
1000 also marks the early momentum that was to set in place the crusades. The church was beginning to find its political voice and possibly used the pending return of Christ to its advantage. When He never returned, however, 2000 was set as the popular date for such an event.
It’s the previous millennial era, marked by the=20birth of Christ, that we find a closer parallel with today, says Suskin. At the time, Israel was in chaos. Competing cults, all claiming to be the truth and the light, had resulted in a sectional society and there can be no doubt that a messiah was needed. The Essene (Nazarene) Jews knew this.
“There is evidence to support the fact that Jesus Christ’s bloodline had been prepared by the Essene cult for up to 150 years,” says Suskin. At this point Rome occupied Jerusalem and there was chaos in the temple. The birth of Christ was to change all that — he would renew the Jews’ covenant with Moses.
Premillennial tension
That’s not entirely different to today. The world in 1997 is also, in a sense, a society in chaos and we are also looking for a messiah — the anguish that characterises the death of a “saintly” figure like Diana, Princess of Wales proves as much. Our crusades are superhighways of information technology, the globalisation of local cultures. Since the last millennium, the world is a smaller place. And our millennial madness is exacerbated by Aids, by confusion and “information sickness”, a serious environmental crisis, overpopulation, mistrust of government.
This may seem depressing, but it is precisely why the millennium is such a big deal. The year 2000 is the most prophesied date in the history of man. It’s not just Christians. It’s everything from Nostradamus to a Hindu age of light to the pending astrological shift, to Hopi and Mayan prophecies to goddamn Isaac Newton. It’s a charged era — premillennial tension is a very real factor.
Which is why people became susceptible to false prophets like Asahara, the Branch Davidians, the Solar temple or the Heaven’s Gate cult. It is why The X-Files topped the televison ratings. We need a solution or El Ni=F1o will get us.
It is for all these reasons that it is difficult to believe, as Handy does, that the moment that the clock ticks over to the next millennium will be a damp squib.
“It’s in all of us. Even the hardened atheist,” says Chris Carter of his follow-up to The X-Files. He’s gone beyond alien abductions and government conspiracies. “There’s some degree of hope in all of us that our faiths can be tested, that we’ll see something that shakes us and moves us and lets us believe there’s something beyond the temporal and the mundane. That’s why I made Millennium.”
Of course, by now you are probably familiar with the theory that Carter is working with “Them” to prepare us for the inevitable alien invasion. According to Ralph, who has an entire Web site devoted to this conspiracy, “They” are not going to be coming across the Manhattan skyline in cheery little saucers. Oh no, they are already among us. Like Carter, they have assumed our identity and now it’s only a matter of time. Say two years or so …