Celebrations of Milleniums

[gldnreef at primenet.com]

At 07:51 AM 9/6/97 BST, Luis Gonzalez-Reimann wrote:
>If you mean apocalyptic ideas, it would be surprising to find a connection
>to any of the 'historical' eras, such as the Shaka one.  Escathological
>concerns would be linked to the yuga system of chronology, the Puranic
>version of which describes the current Kali yuga as lasting 432 000 years,
>starting in 3,102 BCE.  However, the equivalent of current Western
>apocalytic preoccupations related to the millenium is the idea that the Kali
>yuga is coming to an end and a new Satya yuga is dawning.  Many modern
>movements claim that this is currently taking place.
>
>
>Luis Gonzalez-Reimann
>University of California, Berkeley
>

To which calendar do these modern movements adhere now that the Gregorian
calendar seems to be nearly world-wide?  The interesting thing about
numerical symbolism in eschatologies is that the particular calendar does
not seem to matter.  Millenarian movements are very syncretic -- using
everything from Jaina yugas to Mayan astronomical calculations.  Even
Christians who worry about the year 2000 use the words of Jesus, the
Apocalypse of John, Nostradamus and Joachim of Fiore who all lived by the
Julian calendar.