Harbingers of the Apocalypse

"For the love of Go....! What is this madness. What is happening. Am I dreaming".

I am trapped in a nightmare. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are riding towards me. I try to run...but I am paralysed with fear, rooted numb with horror - for terrifying are they to behold. My mind is fast forwarding backwards, like a movie reel spinning in reverse. I stare stupidly at the symbolic figures from the Book of Revelation, representing significant events that will occur at the end of days.

These horsemen - harbingers of God's judgment and the tribulations that precede the second coming of Christ. What the holy hell!

But there appears a 'strike through' on the names associated with the apocalypse - WHY!...Is it because, humanity - and not the creator, is actually the catalyst which will bring doom down upon ourselves.

Have we created our own Armageddon by being simplistic idiots who do not at all know what is, and what is not good for us.

"LOOK AND SEE". A commandingly loud and ominous voice boomed.

Still unable to move. I looked - and saw what I had no wish to see.

Seriously - why were they giving me a preview of what was to come. I silently wished that they would show it to someone else. I tried, but dream me could not even close my eyes to the moving pictures of hell on earth.

Oh, the horror!

First they showed me: Conquest (Riding a White Horse).

The first horseman rides a white horse and is representing conquest and or pestilence. He carries a bow and is given a crown, symbolizing victory and authority. He is the spirit of conquest and victory - the Antichrist or false peace. (Reminding me of a few leaders of our time).

Second came: War (The Red Horse).

The second horseman rides a red horse and symbolizes war and bloodshed. He wields a sword and is permitted to take peace from the earth, leading to conflict and strife among people. War Symbolizes violence and warfare, indicating the bloodshed and conflict that will arise.

Third, oh the inhumanity: (Famine (On his Black Horse).

The third horseman rides a black horse and represents famine. He carries a pair of scales, indicating scarcity and the weighing of food, which signifies economic hardship. Famine Represents lack and hunger, highlighting the economic collapse and suffering that will follow.

Lastly comes Death: Death (Will ride a Pale/Green Horse).

The fourth horseman rides a pale (or greenish) horse and is named Death. He is accompanied by Hades, god of the dead and is given authority to kill a quarter of the earth's population through various means, including sword, famine, and plague.

Death's Pale Horse Personifies death itself, signifying widespread mortality and destruction.

The scene sharpens.

The sky is the colour of burnt parchment. The ground beneath them is cracked - old.

And from the horizon, the Four Horsemen thunder forward - distant symbols, towering embodiments of dread, inevitability, and revelation.

Still, my body refuses to move.

Fear has turned my limbs to stone.

My mind reels backward, like the film reel unspooling - meanings, myths collapsing into one another.

And yet, even in this paralysis, I see.

Not just the terror.

Not just the end.

But the strange, symbolic intelligence of the nightmare.

Each Horseman is more than a threat.

They are archetypes - the kind you’re drawn to, the kind that speak in riddles and shadows.

- War rides first, armour clattering like broken pieces of the nightmare.

- Famine follows, gaunt and hollow-eyed, a ledger of scarcity in its hands.

- Pestilence (or Conquest, depending on the telling) glimmers with a cold, clinical precision.

- Death brings up the rear, not rushing, he knows that he does not need to.

They are terrifying because they are inevitable forces, not villains.

They are the parts of existence that cannot be outrun - only understood.

And my mind, spinning backward, is trying to decode them.

And yet - Something interesting is happening beneath the fear.

Nightmares like this often freeze the body so the psyche can watch.

I'm not running because the dream doesn’t want me to run.

It wants me to witness.

To see what these figures represent in the overall landscape of existence.

To understand why they’ve arrived now, in this form, in this sequence.

There’s also a strange intelligence in the paralysis -

as if the dream is saying:

“Don’t flee.

Just Look.”

The camera drifts around me - as if the nightmare itself has decided to become the cinematographer.

The world slows.

The hooves no longer thunder; they pulse, each impact echoing like a heartbeat of rattling bones. Dust rises in slow spirals, suspended in the air like ash denoting a burning prophecy.

Paralysis is no longer just fear.

It feels ritualistic, as though the dream has pinned me in place to force a revelation I are not yet ready to receive. That the world is not ready - or never will be ready to receive.

And the Horsemen… they begin to speak.

No words nor human tongue is recognizable.

They speak in the symbolic language of nightmares - the language of archetypes, omens, and the subconscious.

War speaks first. No voice, but with a flash.

A battlefield flickers behind his eyes - nothing specific of war, but the idea of conflict itself.

Armies made of shadows collide. Swords clash without sound.

The sky splits open. I feel the meaning more than I understand it:

“I am the maelstrom.

The breaking point.

The moment when what was, cannot remain.”

Famine speaks next.

His horse is skeletal, its ribs like the bars of a cage.

He carries scales that tilt wildly, as if trying to measure something immeasurable.

A whisper of dust swirls around him, forming images:

- Empty bowls

- Withered fields

- A ledger with no numbers, only tally marks that never end.

His message is a hollow ache:

“I am the imbalance.

The hunger that is not for food.”

Pestilence (or Conquest) leans forward.

His presence is clinical, almost surgical.

He glows faintly, like a fever dream.

From him emanates a strange, crystalline logic - the cold inevitability of systems breaking down, of contagion spreading through more than bodies: through ideas, through structures, through the fragile architecture of certainty.

His meaning is a chill:

“I am the unstoppable spread.

The chain reaction.

The unseen force that multiplies.”

And then Death.

The one who does not rush.

Who does not need to.

His horse is pale, but not ghostly - more like the colour of something bleached by time.

He carries no weapon.

He simply is.

When he looks at you, the dream slows even further, as if time itself is bowing.

His message is the quietest, and therefore the loudest:

“I am the threshold.

Not the end.

But The turning.”

The nightmare deepens.

The sky darkens, clouds recede - only symbols remain - ancient, shifting...unreadable.

My mind continues to rewind, faster now, as if the dream is peeling back layers of meaning.

I feel yourself sliding backward through:

- fears

- through echoes

- unfinished lived stories

- the architecture of endings glaring

The Horsemen keep approaching, but not to trample me.

Not yet.

This is only the preamble.

The overture.

The gathering of forces before the true nightmare begins.

The ground trembles.

The air thickens.

The reel keeps spinning backward.

Something else is coming.

Something behind the Horsemen.

Something the dream has not yet revealed.

And I. I am still frozen -

not as participant...

But as witness.