Armageddon (/ˌɑːrməˈɡɛdən/ ⓘ AR-mə-GHED-ən; Ancient Greek: Ἁρμαγεδών, romanized: Harmagedṓn;[1][2] Late Latin: Armagedōn;[3] from Hebrew: הַר מְגִדּוֹ, romanized: Har Məgīddō) is the prophesied gathering of armies for a battle during the end times, according to the Book of Revelation in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. Armageddon is variously interpreted as either a literal or a symbolic location, although the term has since become more often used in a generic sense to refer to any end-of-the-world scenario. In Islamic theology, Armageddon is also mentioned in Hadith as the Greatest War or Al-Malhama Al-Kubra.[4]
The word Armageddon appears only once in the Greek New Testament, in Revelation 16:16. The word is a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew har məgīddō (הר מגידו). Har means "a mountain" or "a range of hills". This is a shortened form of harar meaning "to loom up; a mountain". Məgīddō refers to a fortification made by King Ahab that dominated the Plain of Jezreel. Its name means "place of crowds".[5][6]
Adam Clarke wrote in his Bible commentary (1817) on Revelation 16:16:
Armageddon – The original of this word has been variously formed, and variously translated. It is הר־מגדון har-megiddon, "the mount of the assembly;" or חרמה גדהון chormah gedehon, "the destruction of their army;" or it is הר־מגדו har-megiddo, "Mount Megiddo."[7]
Ragnorak as an esoteric allegory of the heights of spiritual attainment
Manly P. Hall, writing in Self-Unfoldment through Disciplines of Realization, interprets the Norse myth of Ragnarok as an esoteric allegory of the heights of spiritual attainment:
"To refer again to our Nordic myths, in the last great day, the Gotterdammerung, the twilight of the gods, the heroic souls prepare themselves to do battle against the powers of darkness. And what are these powers? The armies of the shadow, the souls of the dead, wraiths riding in ships of mist, horrid apparitions loosed from the caves of Hel, monsters from under the earth, deceivers, false witnesses and false prophets, a host of vagaries riding in the ship of fools.
"This is the pageantry of the lower mind, the mind which has filled the world with false doctrines and then bound men with them. The mind which has filled the air with demons and the earth with shadows, the mind which has conjured up fearsome ghouls and then prostrated itself before the productions of its own fears. The struggle between the Self and its lower selves, between realization. and opinion, between illumination and thought, this is the last great war. Each must fight this battle within his own nature. Before he can proceed, he must emerge victorious in his battle with his own thoughts.
"It is a strange war, the strangest war of all. He must fight without fighting. For if he opposes ignorance with any impulse of the will, his realization fades away and he is left helpless. His victory must be in the simple fact of knowing which scatters the ghosts opposing him. There is no true struggle or warfare between light and darkness. When light comes, darkness fades away. Man wins by the steadfastness of his light. His victory is a gentle becoming of Truth. His enemy can not strike back. Shadows and unrealities have no power except that which is bestowed upon them by one of the numerous attributes of ignorance. As ignorance ceases, the adversary is left powerless; but the ghosts do not return to their caverns and their grottoes. All vanish together in the presence of the knower."