Isaiah Roman

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Some of you may know that phrase as the title of a novel by Ray Bradbury. Some of you may recognize it from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Act IV, scene 1. In Macbeth, the wicked thing is the king himself, who, by this point in the play, has become a traitor and a murderer. In the scene, the witches are dancing around the cauldron, putting ingredients into a potion and calling out an incantation. The scene is set to tell the audience that these are wicked women, bent on sorcery. When the knock comes at the door, the “Second Witch” says that her tingling thumbs tell her that something wicked is at the door. Perhaps it should remind you of the phrase “it takes one to know one.”

You see, if you have the relevant historical context, either by your own experience, or by studying someone else’s, you can have a really good idea as to what lies in wait for your future. Knowledge is not necessarily the key. You can gain knowledge from books, or movies, or even other people, but that knowledge is always tainted with the influence of others. You can look to science, or statistics, but those things are also tainted with the goals and ideals of those who conduct the research. There is one factor that you can rely on. That factor is trends.

Trends tell you more than science, or statistics. Trends tell you how well the science and statistics hold up to reality.

When I use the word trend, I’m not talking about what’s trendy, or what’s popular. I’m talking about those things that happen over time. There is a trend towards cost effectiveness. We don’t need to discuss the cause of the trend. We don’t need to worry about how the trend moves along, or even what moves the trend along. All we need to do is look at the trend. If you ignore the trend, then you’re simply not facing reality. If you join the trend, then you’re not objectively looking at reality.

For instance, in the sixties there was a trend towards shorter skirts and brighter fabrics. In the seventies there was a trend towards man-made fibers and more subdued earth-tones. This sort of cycle should indicate something. These movements from one style to another, from one sensibility to another, can be looked at like up and down points on a wave. If the trend towards bigger cars in the late sixties is the “high point” and the trend towards smaller, more efficient cars in the seventies and early eighties is a “low point” then what you see happening is an oscillation. An oscillation is the measurement of the distance between high points and low points. The “wave form” is the shape of the wave generating the high points and low points.

Here’s an example; for about twenty years, real butter was bad for you. It was high in cholesterol and fat. That’s a straight line. Then, we discover that butter is good for you and that some margarine is actually not that much better than real butter, nutritionally speaking. In fact, some margarine is worse, because butter contains certain milk proteins that can be good for you. So, now we switch to butter being okay. That’s an oscillation, but it didn’t take a gradual twenty year process for butter to go from being evil, to being okay. It took just a couple of years for that to turn around. That’s a rapid transition. So, the question becomes, if you’re tracking trends, how fast do those trends reach their “highs” and their “lows.”

Now, here’s the important thing. Everything – and I mean everything – is subject to the laws of physics. Even metaphysical constructs like hope, love, and charity, are connected to our physical reality. These things all produce oscillations. People react to evil acts. The goal is to balance out the evil with good, but we are all witness to the truth that there are “evil times” and there are “good times” and that the two seem to go in phases, or trends. But, when those high points and low points start to get closer and closer together, vibrations are produced. I don’t mean some kind of spiritual vibration, or some kind of crystal resonance, I mean instabilities.

When good fights against evil, the two sides are trying to force things in their direction. Usually we’d like to think that good is stronger than evil an that good stays on the “high point” or on a straight line for far much longer than the “low points” of evil. For instance, Hitler in Europe was a low point, but compared to the following twenty years of prosperity and freedom, and compared to the twenty years of prosperity and/or freedom prior to World War II (for most of Europe and America), the seven years of war were a relatively short time. Oh sure there were bad times, like the great depression, and the Weimar era in Germany, but there weren’t planes dropping bombs on children.

Yet, when the times of evil and the times of good seem to bounce up and down more and more rapidly, there is a wide sense of unease. It’s like the calm before the storm. What most people don’t realize is that the apparent calm before the storm, isn’t calm at all. The stillness in the air is the result of two forces oscillating with such strength and rapidity that they almost seem to cancel each other out.

Some people see this time of calm as a sort of peace, but it is nothing of the sort. It is simply two forces marshaling their strengths before a huge blow.

Right now the stock market is up and down, up and down. These sorts of trends are not new at all, but they are much more rapid than ever before. There is another factor as well. When oscillations move more quickly, that’s okay. That just means there’s an excitement, a general movement towards change. However, when those oscillations grow larger and move more rapidly, that’s bad. That means there’s a violent change coming.

Look around you and see how many things are changing, more rapidly, and to a larger degree. Take a real look at the trends that seem to be conflicting against each other, the forces pulling at each other. If you feel a sense of general calm before the storm, remember, it’s not really calm at all. The only question you have to ask yourself is how big is the storm going to be? To answer that, all you have to do is look and see how many forces are at work against each other.

In the novel by Ray Bradbury, a small town is visited by a carnival which is run by a man named Mr. Dark who captures men’s souls, which become tattoos on his body. He does this by “giving” them what they want, or desire. The carnival is preceded by a lightning rod salesman who warns the two main characters that a storm is coming. That warning is a prophecy. That is what prophecy is.

Let those who have eyes see and understand.