Andrew Joyce, Ph.D.

“The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”
                Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind

In older, less materialistic times our people would often look to the natural world for portents. In the passing of comets, the flight of ravens, and the ominous tinge of an evening sky, any number of divine warnings and directions could be read. In one very famous example, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that in 793 the scholarly colony of monks at Lindisfarne observed unusually high winds and lightning flashes: “Here were dreadful forewarnings come over the land of Northumbria, and woefully terrified the people: these were amazing sheets of lightning and whirlwinds, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the sky. These signs were soon followed by a great famine.” Shortly afterwards, these omens seem to bear fruit when devastation fell on peaceful Lindisfarne in the form of a war band of Norsemen who sacked the cherished monastery, and arbitrarily drowned or enslaved its occupants. As similar attacks and colonizations took place along Britain’s coast in the following months and years, it appeared to many Christian contemporaries as if the world itself were coming to an end. An end, some thought, that had been predicted in the convulsions of the earth itself.

I shrink from superstition, especially of a primitive kind such as this. However, this passage of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle came irresistibly to mind as I surveyed the latest news on the invasion of Europe — a continent that in recent years has endured unusual weather. Just as the sudden winds and lightning prefigured the blitzkrieg attacks of the Norsemen, since 2013 Northern Europe has been beset by warm and wet winters, and colder summers —  resulting in severe floods. These seem eerily to have anticipated the waves of dusky hostile invaders that now incessantly crash upon its shores, raping and murdering Europe’s sons and daughters. The holy ancient motherland appears to cry out in warning to its children.

Although possessing no religious faith, as I write this I find myself feeling a great affinity with the eighth-century scribes who survived or recorded what happened at Lindisfarne. My heart is heavy with a growing daily record of new robberies, new desecrations, mass rapes, and new murders in the land that I see as being holy and sacred in every sense of the word. I see the monk, quill and scroll before him, and I share with him his feeling of bitter dispossession, helplessness, anger, and sorrow. Like him, I look at a world that seems on the verge of its end: a twilight if not of the gods, then of the god-seekers, the Prometheans. Like the monk, I also ask myself why. The eighth-century Christians questioned why their god had forsaken them, blaming the local adoption of pagan hairstyles and a general lack of piety (the Christian mass slaughter of Saxon heathens never came to mind). Many centuries later, I sit at my electronic version of the quill and scroll, questioning why our people continue to slumber, despite their latent might and ingenuity. Blame for this impending Götterdämmerung can be disseminated among so many, even among one’s own kin, that the process serves only to increase despair rather than contribute to clarity, let alone solutions. Read more »