You Think We’d Kind Of Be Used To It

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So as I write this in 2025, a predicted Rapture just didn’t happen. I know, failed Raptures have been predicted ever since a few people made up the idea in the 1830s. But this Rapture, it felt different, more present in the media, more widespread, more manic. I honestly think the internet part of the phenomena.

Suddenly religious and cultural commentators I followed, podcasts I listened to, and so on were talking people getting ready for the Rapture. Of course that quickly turned into people disappointed the Rapture didn’t happen. It just all happened so fast it was a crash course in crashing eschatology that was pretty widespread.

By the time you read this who knows how many other failed Raptures will have happened. Maybe we can get a Rapture of the Month club going.

I wondered just how could people fall for this again? The failed Rapture prediction is a fixture of Christian history, a long-running cautionary tale that people still need to be cautioned against. I mean the weird 2012 “prophecies” didn’t happen, assorted failed predictions have dotted the American cultural landscape for decades, and don’t we go through this every few years?

After some analysis while writing this column (which mutated from its original intent as I wrote it) is that The Rapture predictions aren’t about the Rapture – and today’s technology has hit a point that changes how and why information spread.

Once you poke around history – and watch the most recent Not-Rapture – it becomes very apparent how much psychology is involved. A person or people under crisis. A time of change or turmoil in history. Historical happenings raising questions that lead people to want simple answers. Personal issues and large-scale social and economic issues leading people to want an out.

The Rapture isn’t a coming event, it’s a sign something’s gone on, that people are troubled or seeking something. It’s the echo of a scream shouted into a world that’s not the way people wanted. There was a desperation I hadn’t seen before.

However, as I watched this spread across the Internet, it’s also a reminder of how our social media provides a vector for ideas to spread. Long gone are the days of books of prophecy and media figures preaching The Rapture. A single idea can spread from person to person, person to crowd, crowd to crowd in ways that weren’t imaginable 30 years ago.

Moreso, there are people whos goal is to be an Influencer – even if they call it something else. So many of us are taught to crave social media hits and a widespread audience, and the benefits that entails. I think for many this desire is unconscious or semi-conscious.

The Rapture is a great way to get attention, pure Influencer bait.

Combine troubled times and Influencer Brain and you’ve got a great recipe for the latest Rapture story to spread to people’s brains. Even if there are skeptical people, skepticism isn’t spreading while the latest Influencer Idea is. They network around any skeptics.

What do we do with that? I have no idea. But it’s a reminder any communications strategy we may need to address such viral ideas is going to have to take motivation into mind as well as the technology that boosts it.

Because we’ll go through this again soon enough.

–Xenofact

We Need The Shrines

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I’d seen a Tumblr post about a desire to have community shrines again, a place to leave offerings to local spirits and luminaries, a sort of ritual in physical form. That post made me feel many things and I wanted to explore them.

We have them, we just don’t call them that

As any regular reader knows I adore Little Free Libraries and in fact engage in ritual behavior with them. Every week I place books of particular importance to me in whatever Little Free Library I choose – a used copy of the Tao Te Ching a copy of On Tyranny (which i get in bulk). Sometimes I place other books, and of course sometimes it’s time to clear the shelves – but I always make it part of a ritual.

The Little Free Libraries are a shrine to knowledge and writing, all you have to do is treat them as such. Your favorite gods, immortals, and spirits of such things can be respectfully and appropriately honored – as well as any local spirits you wish to.

But there’s aren’t’ the only “also shrines” out there.

There’s Little Free Galleries that display art, take a piece, leave a piece. There are donation boxes put out to share resources in a community. I’ve seen people leave “bottles” of well wishes for people to pick out, or invite folks to chalk inspirational messages on the sidewalk, hang signs to give neighbors a books, and so on. All of these are shrines if you let them be. In fact, they may be shrines anyway if you really think about it, and the creators may not have realized it consciously – but unconsciously, who knows?

Real shrines might be a challenge

As much as I’d like full-bore public shrines I think they might be a challenge. Making things multi-spiritual/syncretic is a challenge in America of 2025, and it doesn’t take many people to ruin it anyway. It seems there’s aways some Influencer-Brain busybody out there to raise a stink, and I can hope in the near future we shame them away.

This makes me sad. The honest need for shared public ritual, spaces, and values is important. I think we need something like that. I think our culture, such as it is, needs something like that. Shared ritual space, perhaps just silent leaving of offerings and wishes, would do so much good for us.

However . . .

But let’s do it anyway – our way

What this really makes me think is we should start making public shrines and ensuring things are public shrines but in ways that work it into the community – and thwart busybodies.

Start with the Little Free Libaries, Little Free Studios, Donation boxes, and so on. Make donations, get your fellow spiritually-inclined folks to join in. Set regular times, do a walk around a city to hit specific spots relevant to local spirits, history, and so on. If you had a lousy day make an extra special donation, or make a donation in the name of those passed or those blessed. Use what we have.

Extend what you do. Nothing wrong with sending the person supporting a Little Free Library an anonymous card of gratitude and maybe a few bucks to pay for expenses and a non-specific “bless you.”. Put a bookmark that just happens to have your fave deity in the book you donate. When you donate food, put sticky note with a blessing to the person taking it on it, wishing them well. That sign someone hung on a tree saying “Have A Nice Day” probably needs another sign with another affirmation next to it to further encourage people.

Maybe make anonymous shrines out of some places you find. Oh nothing official, but perhaps you and your friends may agree to “enshrine” a specific area or thing, a bench or a post or something significant. Leave offerings and notes over time. Don’t call it out, or make it “official” just do it and see what happens.

Let’s get our shrines back, subtly at first, but then let’s see how far we can go . . .

–Xenofact

Maybe We Should Be Copying

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Think about how much of human knowledge was dependent on Some Person With A Pen. Before the internet, before the printing press, there was Person With A Pen copying books stroke by stroke, word by word.

Even as technology advanced, Person With A Pen was important (and after a point, Person With A Typewriter). Print shops, printing devices might be carefully controlled by the government or just unavailable due to cost. Person With A Pen was there, and knowledge continued outside of official sources.

Others might have copied things for which a printing press might be excessive. Among my library of Taoist literature is a book on massage and energy exercises called Immortal Fang’s Longevity Quigong. The original book is rather small and illustrated, so people passing around these exercises might find it easier to copy them. The book seemed to have been passed among friends, so that was probably the norm.

There are doubtlessly many motivations for Person with a Pen, but one common thing they all share is that they are getting very intimate with a book. Imagine what it’s like to copy a book, how it sits in your head, how it’s burned into your mind. Imagine what it’s like to do it more than once.

It has to drive the knowledge into your head, to make you understand it more. I’ve often heard stories of people borrowing books to copy them, some people making both a copy for themselves and another for someone else. Imagine what it’s like for religious and spiritual professionals to copy a holy text, the words settling into their souls.

Now of course it’s usually easy to get books. If it’s not in stock you can probably get it print on demand or find it used. Looking at my own library I’m grateful for how many people made this possible.

But, and you can guess where I’m going, I wonder if maybe some of us spiritual and religious types should give copying a book a shot now and then.

I’ve thought of doing this with a few Taoist works – at the top of the list are The Secret of the Golden Flower and maybe a composite of my favorite Tao Te Ching translations. Even typing them up – let alone writing them – would make me evaluate words, remember them, live them. I wonder what I’d learn, retain, and feel if I just copied some of the worlds that have influenced me.

I’m not sure I’d do it, but hey three years ago I wasn’t thinking of zines.

Maybe it’s an exercise some of us should try. Imagine taking time, like a weekend away, just to copy a spiritual work that’s important to you. Imagine reliving the role of Person With a Pen and connecting not just to the work in question, but with our history.

–Xenofact