Dreaming the End of the World: Apocalypse As a Rite of Passage [Paperback]

Michael Ortiz Hill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1994

What might be revealed by the more than 100 "apocalyptic" dreams collected by the author? Just as Jung saw the approach of the First World War in dreams, as well as the phenomenon of flying saucers, so might these dreams disclose the shape of things to come. Includes a bibliography, as well as an extraordinary and ample glossary of dream images and metaphors.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Very, very few people today dare to go near this topic. This is a profound book." -- Ram Dass --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Michael Hill Ortiz is a writer, registered nurse, and practitioner of traditional African medicine in the United States and among Bantu people in Zimbabwe. > --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Spring Pubns (December 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0882143646
• ISBN-13: 978-0882143644
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,436,565 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deep, insightful, fresh, satisfying, June 22, 1999

By 

Daren Scot Wilson ([e-mail]) (Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dreaming the End of the World: Apocalypse As a Rite of Passage (Paperback)

Starts by describing the nuclear bombs of WWII, from an experiential viewpoint. There are quotes from physicists I haven't seen elsewhere. They were changed, and they knew the world had changed. After this dramatic introduction, the author describes, with dreams fragments as examples, several stages of apocalypse, tying together the personal-scale experiences and the archetypical end of the world symbolized by the Bomb. This is no trivial book where the author just threw some related ideas together; Michael Ortiz Hill has skillfully related ideas that, to me, seem to be from different worlds. One very minor gripe is the lack of an index, but there is a topical dream image glossary, very fun to browse, and I'm not sure this book would benefit much from a regular index. Like movies, some of which are entertaining but you forget as soon as you walk out of the theater, and others make you think about life for some time afterward, books can be fleeting or lasting. Dreaming the End of the World was one of the most satisfying, enlightening, food-for-thought books I've ever read, and it's good for a second -- or third -- reading.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eloquent and important, August 12, 2009

By 

Steven Taylor "Gyrus" (England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dreaming the End of the World: Apocalypse as a Rite of Passage (Paperback)

This is a quite brilliant book, pulling together dreams of nuclear holocaust using sensitive, shrewd psychological observation. Hill finds patterns, but schematizes them in a way that respects rather than over-interprets the material. If you've not already discovered through personal experience, this book should demonstrate the profound significance of apocalyptic dreams, where boundaries between personal and cultural psychology become more and more fluid. If you've experience this kind of dream already, reading this book is an even more potent demonstration of the liminal nature of dreams. I found the common themes and motifs that Hill draws out of his informants' dreams to reflect with uncanny precision the threads running through my own nuclear / apocalypse dreams. Especially fascinating and important is the segue from the dream of nuclear holocaust to the dream of ecological devastation; again, something that my own dreams testify to. I always suspected I wasn't alone; this book made me sure. Hill's book makes an excellent contribution to the idea that there is some form dream world, more mercurial than this world, but a clear overlapping of our dream landscapes.