#cyclical time

And it is quite interesting how recurring the motif of "Magic before and after our time" is. You know, the alliance of both "There used to be a time of wonders and magic in the distant past, but it went away" and "There will be again spells and monsters and demons once the apocalypse happened". The idea of a distant-past fantasy mixed with a distant-future fantasy was usually complimentary.

Today most people think of "Adventure Time" as a depiction of this motif, even thinking of it as a "subversion" because it shows magic was there before humans appeared, then went into hiding, and returned only after humanity was destroyed. Itself comes from "Wizards!" the movie which also has this take that "the fairies of old could only thrive after the nuclear winter". And deep down it can all come back to the vintage classic of fantasy Shannara, which depicts a Middle-Earth copy as a post-apocalyptic universe where most of fantasy elements are born of mutation or ancient technology... Except for the elves and some nature spirits which existed before humanity appeared and do come from the "time of legends".

More recently fantasy readers will be also accustomed to this through the cyclical time structure of "The Wheel of Time", where the fantasy adventures we read about are both the distant past from which our myths and legends will be born, and yet the aftermath of the apocalyptic fall of an hyper-advanced society of our future...

But by the very foundational works of the fantasy genre, in the early 20th century, this idea of "before and after", or of "cyclical magic" is there.

Take Jack Vance. He mainly did two fantasy series which seem to be part of two very different continuities. His "Dying Earth" series, which named the entire "dying earth" genre the same way his magic ideas named the "Vancian magic" trope popularized by D&D. And his Lyoness series, which is Vance doing a fantasy take on Arthurian material and old European fairytales. One set in the distant future of the planet where the sun is dying and civilizations collapsed, another set in the time of the realms of Logres and before the Holy Grail was found, back when fairies still walked the earth... Yet, when you read both series, you realize that they are meant (or strongly implied) to be set in the same continuity or universe, as the magic system and various fantastical elements are shared in an obvious way.

And before Jack Vance, there was Clark Ashton Smith. Where Vance remained implicit and discreet, mostly dropping connecting elements as Easter eggs for faithful readers, Smith went full on explicit. Because when you read his famous "dying earth" unofficial series (a "dying earth" series from before Vance's own Dying Earth), the dark fantasy/Orientalist Gothic "Zothique", it is said that this world is a fantasy one because the end of time and the death of the planet allowed for magic, gods and demons to return... Those of "Mu, Poseidonis and Hyperborea". Which are some of his other fantasy settings - from a mythical Antiquity (Poseidonis is part of Atlantis) to a Prehistoric fantasy (Hyperborea is fantasy adventures by the time of the saber-toothed tigers and mammoths).

It is really fascinating how instinctively it used to be woven in fantasy that "the end will be like the beginning" or "as before, so after".

in time, he gets used to his surroundings, and the people get used to him. he doesn't fully remember the life he left behind, but brings bits and pieces of it to the village nonetheless; his life had revolved around machinery before, and he tries his best to emulate it, to return to the routine, to daily life.

some, curious, stop by to ask him what he's doing, what he's thinking, and he readily shares. they don't quite understand at first, so he decides to start from the very beginning and build from there, and eventually they understand.

he devotes the rest of his life, staying, working in the place he was found, to teaching; to bring back the youth he remembers, to bring forth a new age for these people. he leaves behind countless writings on his deathbed, about giant stores of energy and metal canisters storing them, about boards with such minuscule detail, each of them crucial to create tablets which responded to simple touch; about metal snakes under the earth which could bring people anywhere they wished.

he is the first spark of a new era. villages, towns which then turn into cities build and grow upon the visions he saw in his mind. dirt is replaced with pavement and asphalt, and it is no longer the trees which tower over humans, no longer the stars which light up the night sky. a life he saw once, lived once, in a dream, as he died.

---

no one knows what technology exactly brought about the end of things. some say it was a superweapon, developed by people who had conquered everything on earth, to conquer even the invisible stars. some say it was a monster, argued to be of the mind, with a giant maw; slurping and demanding more and yet more energy, until the earth could give no more. some say it was a blight of death-mist synthesised by titans, merciless as the common people pled, for they weren't the ones dying.

(everyone, of course, knows that, at its very core, humanity really just turned on itself, as it is wont to do. again and again, civilisations have fallen and wars have raged on.

humanity just had the power to destroy the world along with their own human constructs this time. materially, mentally.

and, would you say, the engineer was the one who lit the fuse first, with the words he wrote, teaching people the first steps to construct these monstrosities?)

at any rate, the apocalypse happened, that which would be passed down in tales, as scores of people died. first the poor, but the rich soon realised they would not be spared either. they ordered their engineers to develop safety pods at record pace, seeking escape, but for many it was too late. ragnarok had come, and razed the earth, only a scant few survivors falling through the cracks; and all that remained after were the shells of what had once been called cities.

no longer would people work with that which had perhaps led to the destruction of the decadent life their ancestors had once lived; or perhaps it was because the survivors did not know how to. the ruins were abandoned; plants regrew, claiming, burying the old steel and concrete.

the world eventually forgot, after many generations, as tales diluted as they were passed down, as new generations no longer saw the marks - forgot about the monsters which scarred the land, as they were by now deep in the earth and long gone. and so the world healed, and life went on.

---

in a small village, a few people are digging out the nearby mountain, for coal to pass the long, cold nights. they find, instead, a giant cylinder, made from an ore they cannot name, cold to the touch.

upon further inspection, they find there is a man sleeping in the cylinder. of course, they immediately set about freeing him from his prison, which they do successfully, though not without some trouble.

when they - perhaps unceremoniously, but very practically - dump the man out of the cylinder onto the well-trod ground, a few strange, flat rectangular objects, the size of a palm, fall out of the stiff leather pocket on his person. the language of the words written upon them is dead; not one person, except perhaps their slumbering owner, knows how to speak, much less read, the inscriptions. some debate using the objects as extra kindling, for they have no other discernible use.

if they could read, though, here's what they would learn: that this man was an engineer, employed by a long-obsolete company, forced to develop and test a new prototype of safety pods the day the apocalypse hit his city. he was born on the 10th of june - as if the name of the month had any significance now - and was previously diagnosed with asthma, as many in his generation were.

at any rate, the engineer soon wakes.

he is the final embers of a dead empire. he is the first spark of a budding era.

the rest is history.

---

time is a circle. the snake shall forever inject venom into its tail.

Some days...

Hard but receptive.

locating softness and malleability in the ability to receive light through color, texture,

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Talk to me about Endings. What is an ending? An ending comes at the end of something, which means that something had to come before it. A Beginning. A Middle. And after all else has come, there is the ending.

If the birth of the universe in Mesoamerica was a tortuous process of trial and error, then the end of time was never conceived as an eternal salvation, but as an inevitable collapse—violent, purifying, and cyclical. In pre-Hispanic thought, time showed no mercy: destruction was the only way to cleanse the world’s accumulated decay and allow for a new beginning. For ancient peoples, the…